Despite being phrased as a “not” question, the best first approach for this question is actually to confirm what the passage is saying about unhealthy lifestyles and the SES gradient. Unhealthy lifestyles are mentioned in the second to last paragraph, and the last paragraph mentions that these risk factors do not explain the SES gradient. So the right answer is likely going to be some information from that last paragraph about how, even in the wealthiest countries, “there is no relation between a country’s wealth and the health of its people.”
This is given as direct evidence for the idea that unhealthy lifestyles might account for the SES gradient, so A actually states the opposite of what I’m looking for. I can eliminate it.
I am immediately suspicious about B because it resembles the main idea, but is not specific to unhealthy lifestyles and their relation to the SES gradient. Because of this, B is safe to eliminate.
This is given in the last paragraph as an explanation for what seems logical: that these risks of unhealthy lifestyles would be mitigated by the greater wealth of a nation. C therefore, like A, actually speaks to why one might blame unhealthy lifestyles for the SES gradient. C has to be incorrect.
And D is definitely the right answer, because it corresponds with what I predicted when studying the question stem.
This is a tricky question because it is asking me about the U.S.: a specific country in a passage that is more about a global phenomenon. Other countries are mentioned, like Great Britain, so I might be tempted to refer back to the passage. But a smarter strategy now is actually to just rely on the main idea: that people who are lower on the SES ladder will tend to have worse health.
This isn’t what I predicted, but given what I went through to answer Q1, A feels like a very compelling right answer. The second to last paragraph states that in Westernized countries (like the U.S.), people who are lower on the SES ladder will tend to have unhealthy habits. So I can confidently choose A.
This is only true of the U.K.; since it is not stated to be true about the U.S., I can therefore eliminate B.
I can eliminate C because I do not recall the passage ever comparing different Westernized countries (besides the U.K.).
D is wrong for the same reasons that C is wrong. These two answer choices are probably there to prey on people who have a pro-U.S. bias: a claim that the passage does not touch on at all.
This is a straightforward strengthener, so I just need to find something which suggests that sicker one is, the poorer one is.
A reveals how the test is trying to make this question difficult. A might seem right on a quick read because it links poor health and poverty, but the question is specifically asking for a choice that says “poorer health leads to lower SES.” A argues the opposite: that being poor leads to poorer health outcomes. So A cannot be right.
B is wrong for the same reason that A is wrong. B is still saying that being poor leads to poor health, when the question stem is asking us for the opposite. I need to be on the lookout for a sentence that is phrased in the opposite way.
C is what I am looking for; the children are in poor health, and so are poorer. C has to be right.
D is incorrect even though it resembles C because its second half does not have anything to do with wealth.
This requires a quick check of the passage, unless I took notes on who the Whitehall studies actually studied. What made the population so conveniently stratified, according to paragraph 6, is that the study studied the British civil service, which had a hierarchy “ranging from blue-collar workers to high-powered executives.” And since the passage is talking about the SES ladder, I know that this hierarchy has to include people with different income levels.
There is something of a hierarchy in university faculty, but it’s really rudimentary compared to the British civil service. More problematically, faculty members are likely to make relatively the same amount of money, and so would not offer enough representation on the SES ladder to be compared to the British civil service.
This feels more like the right answer. Members of the British civil service and of a military branch would both range from very low income (soldiers) to high income (generals), with very clearly defined salaries and social statuses. This is a tough question, though, so it makes sense to eliminate the other answer choices.
This is incorrect because it is too much like A. There is something of a hierarchy, but it’s not especially well defined. And I can reasonably expect that the monks would earn about the same amount of money. So C has to be wrong.
Though there are more senior and junior members of a legislature, the entire idea of having a state legislature involves the vast majority of the members of that legislature being equal: doing the same jobs, for the same pay. B is therefore definitely the right answer.
I noticed this example because it was so fascinating. Even though the nuns probably occupied a similar part of the SES ladder when they were studied, the study actually showed how differences in their childhood SES manifested as differences in their health outcomes later in life. The right answer should say something to that extent.
The entire point of the anecdote is actually to challenge A, insofar as the nuns lived a similar lifestyle, and yet had different health outcomes because of their childhood SES. That makes A incorrect.
The study was all about the SES of the nuns before they shared a lifestyle. Since B is about the SES of the nuns after they shared a lifestyle, B has to be incorrect.
This is correct. The similarities in lifestyle between the nuns allowed the study to isolate their childhood SES as a variable.
C makes D look ambiguous; is D talking about the nuns’ SES when they were studied, or when they were children? In either case, the study is not described as looking for specific factors that increased or decreased life; rather, the study was conducted just to determine whether or not childhood SES had an effect on people later in life.
To answer this question, I need to discern what claim made by the passage corresponds with the situation in the question stem. Informed consent is discussed in the last paragraph, but nothing there obviously relates to inmates refusing to be X-rayed. Looking back in the passage, though, informed consent is related to the larger issues of confidentiality, which paragraph 2 states “is particularly important in a prison hospital setting, in which patients feel distrust because physicians are often employed by the incarcerating institution.” The right answer is likely to say something to this effect: that the inmates would not want to be X-rayed because they do not trust the doctors.
A has to be wrong because the situation in the question suggests the opposite: that the inmates are seeking privacy by refusing as intimate a scanning procedure as being X-rayed.
B is an answer choice that tests whether I am aware of the passage topic. If I am not, B might be a reasonable presumption to make, since one can imagine that people get X-rayed because they are concerned for their health. However, the passage is all about privacy concerns and the ethics of reporting what might come up during a health examination; nothing in the passage discusses how much inmates are concerned about their health, so B has to be incorrect.
This is exactly what I’m looking for. C makes perfect sense because it accounts for both why the inmates would refuse to be X-rayed, and why the question stem mentions that there is no informed consent procedures at the prison: because informed consent practices help encourage trust between physicians and prisoners.
The passage does mention that inmates might carry weapons, but it’s hard to see why refusing to be X-rayed might suggest D. D is also a less attractive choice because it does not really account for why the author has to mention that the prison lacks an informed consent policy.
The author’s main argument is that, in the absence of an imminent threat, physicians should respect the patient’s right to privacy. Conversely, though, if there is some imminent threat, then “the physician has a ‘duty to warn.’ According to case law, when the physician believes that a significant threat of harm exists, the duty to warn takes precedence over the patient’s right to privacy” (paragraph 4). So I can predict that the answer will involve the physician reporting the discovered weapon to the authorities.
The passage does suggest that this is one case in which the doctor should report the weapon, but the passage does not clearly suggest that this is the only reason a doctor should do so. That makes A wrong.
Again, the passage does allow for reporting the weapon if the prisoner consents, but it is not the only condition under which a doctor should report the patient.
This is wrong simply because nothing in the passage requires that the patient be lying for the doctor to report the weapon.
D matches my prediction, so I can choose it confidently.
This may be a difficult question because of the length of the answer choices and question stem, but the upside to a long question stem is that it can give me enough information to predict an answer to the question. If good medical practice depends on clinical autonomy, and the primary reason for clinical autonomy according to the passage is to protect prisoner rights to privacy through means such as confidential communication, then the author must believe that failing to preserve confidential communication would negatively affect medical practice: would make medical practice worse.
This doesn’t make sense. There can be any number of reasons why the quality of medicine practiced in a prison declines that have nothing to do with whether or not physicians keep patient information confidential. Maybe the prison decreased funding for medicine, or maybe the prison hired bad doctors. A cannot be correct.
B seems like a good answer choice because the passage mostly links clinical autonomy to protecting prisoner privacy. However, the extreme wording of the question should give me pause. Also, autonomy is another word for freedom of choice, and the passage also suggests that physicians may have a choice to make: whether or not a prisoner represents enough of a danger that the prisoner’s right to privacy gets superseded by the physician’s duty to warn. Since that is a choice that doctors can make, and so a manifestation of their autonomy, I can see how B could be wrong. Because of that, I’d leave B alone, but be on the lookout for a better answer.
C is again suspicious because of its strong language. But I can eliminate C safely because it actually resembles A. While the ability to protect patients is one way to improve the quality of medicine in a prison, it is not sufficient, by itself, to guarantee that the quality of medicine is high. Perhaps, again, like A, the doctors who keep confidentiality are bad doctors, or are working in substandard conditions. Since it is easy to imagine a myriad of cases in which the quality of medicine is bad in spite of strong policies to protect patient confidentiality, C has to be wrong. That means D is hopefully what I’m looking for.
This says what I was looking for: that when a physician is forced to break confidentiality, the quality of care suffers. Since D is far less negotiable than B, I can pick D with confidence.
This is a vague enough reference that it makes sense to check paragraph 2. “Necessary information” is listed as information that a health professional would seek during “a routine physical examination,” such as “medical history” and patient data. So the right answer will likely involve information that anyone would normally give to a doctor. The added bit of context, though, is that paragraph 2 is a response to the situation in paragraph 1, so that means that there is a high likelihood that the necessary information will be “drugs and paraphernalia”: something that would come up during a medical examination.
A does not necessarily have anything to do with patient health, so I can eliminate A safely.
B resembles A (which is almost certainly intentional), but is far more likely to affect patient health, since one ingests drugs, and drugs to have an effect on one’s health. But even though I predicted B, its closeness to A makes me want to check the other answer choices just in case.
This does not have anything to do with one’s health, and this is information that is unlikely to come up during a routine medical examination, so C is an easy answer choice to eliminate.
D is a really attractive answer choice, because one could disclose one’s psychiatric history during a routine physical examination. But D is a bit less likely than B, and B is far more relevant to the passage, so I would choose B over D.
This is a really broad question stem that refers to the main idea, and so it is difficult to predict what the right answer will look like. The best strategy, then, is to be ready to eliminate my way to the right answer: to get rid of choice which don’t accord with the passage.
I really like this answer choice because it is in line with the way the author frames the argument. The entire debate over prisoner confidentiality only makes sense if people outside of prison—people who receive medical care in private settings—were typically afforded confidentiality that those in prison are not. Paragraph 2 states this outright: “confidentiality is particularly important in a prison hospital setting, in which patients feel distrust because physicians are often employed by the incarcerating institution,” and so are less likely to respect their confidentiality. It is unlikely that that fear would be the case in an outside setting. I like this answer enough that I would choose it and move on.
The passage only tangentially discusses when patients are incompetent, and it never suggests that informed consent is especially important in such a case. That makes B incorrect.
The passage mentions X-rays, but it does not point X-rays out as an especially invasive tool. It is rather part of what confidentiality should protect, outside of certain cases.
D is an attractive answer choice because it is generally in agreement with the passage argument, which states that prisoner confidentiality is a dilemma. However, D is here to test if I have a good grasp on the passage argument more specifically. In this case, I can eliminate D because the passage does not suggest that prisoners lose a Constitutional right to privacy. It only suggests the problem of privacy is especially difficult in a prison.
Since I know that the “special importance” of the physician-patient covenant within prisons has to do with the worry that physicians may be forced or encouraged to breach patient confidentiality to prison officials, I know that the right answer should attack that somehow: perhaps by suggesting that either physicians are trusted by prisoners, or that they are hired by some independent commission, any answer that attacks the idea that prison physicians are too close to prison officials will do.
Nothing in the passage depends on prisoners understanding what X-rays will do. This information may be covered when the physician practices informed consent, but that actually does not do away with the concerns the author has over the choices physicians have to make. A therefore has no clear effect on the passage, and so is therefore worth eliminating.
This would weaken the argument, though perhaps not at first glance. This is because B does not weaken the author’s solution to the problem of physician-patient confidentiality; it instead weakens the notion that there is even a problem at all. If prisoners actually trust their physicians, then that makes it less likely that physicians need to take special considerations when working with prisoners in order to make those prisoners feel like their right to privacy is respected. B is therefore correct.
This is a tempting answer choice because I can imagine that these questions would definitely affect the physician-patient relationship. However, C would strengthen the argument, rather than weaken it, since it is in line with why the physician-patient covenant is so important. C further suggests that prisoners receive medical care from doctors they might not have reasons to trust, which in turn makes how the physician handles that relationship all the more important. C is therefore wrong.
D is actually quite similar to A, insofar as it makes a claim about what prisoners know that is not really related to the passage. The passage is primarily focused on whether or not doctors enforce a prisoner’s right to privacy or not; one can imagine a compromised doctor reporting on a patient who does know their Constitutional rights. D has to be wrong because, like A, is has no clear effect on the passage.
The first paragraph seems to argue that “Cooper remains one of the most innovative yet most misunderstood figures in the history of U.S. culture,” but that is actually the larger passage argument. I can determine what the paragraph is arguing by looking at what the evidence in the paragraph is for. In this case, everything else in the passage talks about how much of a positive impact Cooper had on American literature and culture, so the argument is probably actually “Cooper can be said to have invented not just an assortment of literary genres but the very career of the U.S. writer.” That last half of the sentence sticks out because the first half is made largely without an obvious assumption; the author directly states that Cooper invented a bunch of genres, so no assumption is needed to argue that statement. So if Cooper invented “the very career of the U.S. writer,” that implies that few authors, or perhaps none, were able to have a writerly career before him. Note that this is an assumption because the passage does not actually say this; the closes it gets is “Cooper made it possible for other aspiring authors to earn a living by their writings,” which is not the same thing. So I feel pretty good about looking for an answer which states that writers before Cooper probably could not make a living from their writing.
A is really close to something that is actually stated in paragraph 1: that Cooper produced and marketed “fully 10 percent of all U.S. novels in the 1820s, most of them best sellers,” so I am already uneasy about A because assumptions need to be unstated. But A is definitely wrong because it suggests that Cooper wrote the vast majority of the best sellers in the 1820s, and the passage gives me no clear indication of that. There may have been other best selling novels written by other authors at the time; since nothing in the passage requires A to be true, I can confidently eliminate it.
B is here to trick me by taking what is said about Cooper and generalizing it. While that is often one way to generate an assumption, that strategy does not apply here; this passage is about a single innovator, and so does not obviously depend on other great U.S. cultural inventors being misunderstood.
This is exactly what I predicted the assumption would be; C really confirms itself as the right answer by mentioning the 1820s, since that is the date the passage gives us for when Cooper’s books were popular.
This is easy to eliminate because it is too extreme. Nothing in the passage suggests that there were no other American authors during the 1820s.
I know from my reading that paragraph 2 discusses authorized biographies. Since the paragraph argues that Cooper is misunderstood because he did not have an authorized biography, the right answer is very likely going to say something like “having an authorized biography lessens the likelihood that you will be misunderstood.”
I can eliminate A because the second paragraph does not discuss how much people wanted to know about Cooper. All I know is that there was some “public curiosity” about the lives of authors, but that does not say that the less authors talked about themselves, the more people wanted to know about them.
This is exactly what I was looking for; B has to be correct because it speaks to the primary argument of that second paragraph.
The very first thought I had upon reading this answer choice was “Who knows?” The passage maybe implies that more authors were sharing their biographical details during Cooper’s time, but that does not suggest that “authors did not” share such details. C is way stronger than the passage is, and so I can eliminate it.
The argument in the second paragraph isn’t really about protecting author papers enough for D to be the right answer. It’s not clear how such papers are related to Cooper’s being misunderstood and lacking an authorized biographer, especially since Cooper asked his family to protect his papers. The only reason D might be attractive is if a test-taker thought that Cooper was unique in asking for his papers to be protected, since he is described as unique relative to the other authors discussed in paragraph 2 for not having an authorized biographer, but nothing in the passage suggests that it was common or uncommon for authors to have their papers protected. There is just not enough in the passage for D to be correct.
This is an analogy question. I need to choose an answer that resembles how Cooper is described in the last paragraph. The best way to answer this question is to extrapolate a description of Cooper from the last paragraph, and then look for a choice that has the same qualities. The last paragraph states that Cooper was representative in the sense that his life seems to represent the lives of Americans at the time: that his story is “first a story of how, in literature and a hundred other activities, Americans during this period sought to solidify their political and cultural and economic independence from Great Britain and, as the Revolutionary generation died, stipulate what the maturing Republic was to become.” So I’m probably looking for an answer choice which describes someone who might resemble many Americans. Analogy questions are tricky, though, because there are many different ways to analogize something, so I should try to eliminate my way to the right answer and not expect that right answer to jump out at me.
This is a really attractive answer choice, because the last paragraph does discuss how Cooper lived in a variety of locations. However, the start of that paragraph shifts attention away from his writing: “Cooper was not just a pathbreaking figure in the history of writing in the U.S., or a potent visionary; he was a remarkably representative man.” This sentence distinguishes his being “representative” from his being a writer, so I will ideally be looking for a choice that does not involve his writing as much as A does.
B does not have to do with Cooper’s writing, and the last paragraph does mention Cooper’s being in different places as part of the evidence for its claim, so B is a good candidate for the right answer. However, this is a challenging question, and so I will go to the other answer choices looking for reasons to eliminate them.
Nothing in the last paragraph discusses how well-liked he is, so C can be quickly eliminated.
D is wrong for the same reasons A is wrong: because it focuses on his writing. I can therefore choose B with confidence.
This is another analogy question; this time, I need to translate the passage logic into claims about automotive industry. The same approach applies, though: I need to study the fourth paragraph and extrapolate a description of what it is saying about Cooper’s early writings, so I know what the right answer will look like. Paragraph 4 argues that “some of Cooper’s failing were owing to the very newness of what he was attempting”: that the innovation in his early works accounts for some of the criticisms against them. So I am looking for an answer choice in which an automotive company is trying to innovate, but in doing so ends up making some mistakes.
A is testing how much effort I am willing to put into this question. If I am not willing to put a lot of thought and effort into it, A looks like a great answer choice, because I know from earlier in the passage that Cooper wrote best selling books, which echoes “best-selling vehicle.” However, the fourth paragraph suggests the opposite of A: that Cooper’s early books, unlike this new car, was not an immediate success. A is therefore incorrect.
B can be quickly eliminated because it focuses on a vehicle’s projected audience, and nothing in paragraph 4 discusses the projected (or actual) audiences for Cooper’s books.
This is a great answer choice that I can confirm by comparing it, piece by piece, to the argument in paragraph 4. An automobile manufacturer (Cooper) has unexpected mechanical issues with an innovative new vehicle (wrote books of bad quality because of innovation). C is not perfect, but no analogy ever is, and it is more than close enough to what I’m looking for to make it the correct answer.
I don’t even know what to do with D. It is only a vaguely attractive answer choice because the reference to “poor craftsmanship” weakly echoes the notion that there was something wrong with Cooper’s early books, but D isn’t even talking about new cars, or the first cars that an automobile manufacturer makes. I also can’t see what could possibly serve as an analogy for “an extended warranty” in the case of Cooper. D is definitely wrong.
It is nice of the passage to end with a simple reference check question. The three wrong answers will be supported by examples or explanations. The right answer will not be: will just be stated without evidence or argumentation to back it up. Because the three wrong answers will have the same feature in common, it is usually faster to eliminate my way to the right answer.
An earlier question asked me about this evidence, so I know that A is supported in paragraph 1. That makes A incorrect.
Paragraph 2 offers an extensive explanation for why Cooper is to blame for being misunderstood: because he did not authorize a biography of himself, and refused to talk about his life. I can therefore eliminate B.
Another earlier question discussed this, and so I know there is evidence and explanation to back C up. So C has to be incorrect as well.
This is correct. This is actually stated as evidence for another claim in the last paragraph (the one about him being a representative American), and is not itself supported with any evidence or explanation. Since it is just stated, D has to be correct.
This is going to be a rough set of questions in general because it talks about a topic that people are likely going to know about and have opinions about. That makes it especially important that I be sure that I limit myself to just what the passage says. What’s interesting about this question is that it is asking for a “drawback of partisanship” in a passage that is pretty neutral in tone. That makes the moments when the passage is signaling that something is wrong with partisanship a bit easier to find. In this case, there is only one such mention: at the end of the third paragraph, which states that partisanship “may also distort” voters’ “picture of reality.” That gives me a good sense of what to look for in an answer choice.
Voter feelings are discussed in the passage, but there isn’t a clear mention of a relationship between partisanship and voters reacting on the basis of their personal feelings. I have a strong enough sense of what I am looking for in a right answer that I would eliminate A.
B gives me what I’m looking for, so I can move on.
C is incorrect because I know that paragraph 3 suggests that C is not a drawback: that it “is useful to the individual.”
Short-term forces are mentioned in the passage, but not as a drawback of partisanship. D is playing with me by using the term “vulnerable,” which we tend to think of as a word with negative connotations. However, when the term is used in the passage, it is for a fairly neutral situation: how voters may deviate from voting for their party because of short-term forces. Since that’s not obviously a bad thing, D has to be incorrect.
Even though this question is asking me to find something that is stated in the passage, predicting the right answer will be tough because the passage provides many reasons to study partisanship. I know from paragraph 2 that “Partisanship is the most important influence on political and voting behavior,” for example. Luckily, I can narrow this down by looking for reasons specifically given by political analysts. The first instance of this is in paragraph 4: “An underlying partisanship is also of interest to political analysts because it provides a base against which to measure deviations in particular elections.” However, the rest of that paragraph and the next one shift the study a bit from deviations in elections to “short-term forces,” which paragraph 4 suggests is also studied by political analysts. So I should be ready for that to be a possible right answer choice as well.
This is exactly what I predicted, which makes A a great answer choice. However, I also predicted another possibility—that the answer might talk about “short-term forces”—and so just to be on the safe side, I should check the other choice and make sure that does not come up.
Uhoh. B is also what I was looking for, so now I have to choose between A and B. Since B is a more specific version of A, and is what the passage transitions to talking about for another paragraph, my best bet is to go with B.
C can be quickly eliminated because it is the opposite of what is stated in the first paragraph: party identification and therefore partisanship is “a relatively uncomplicated measure.”
D is incorrect because it twists the passage logic. The passage states that people often stay with a party that they choose in childhood, but that is not the same thing as suggesting that one’s choice of political party suggests anything about when one was born. D has to be incorrect.
The passage makes two clear claims: that partisan voters will tend to vote with their party, and that they will only deviate from doing so when “short-term forces” are in play, such as “attractiveness of the candidate, the impact of foreign and domestic policy issues, and purely local circumstances” (paragraph 4). So I just need to find an answer that resembles any of these factors.
A fits the description of a “purely local” circumstance, and so I can pick A and move on.
B is a bad answer right off the bat because, in a passage that assumes partisanship, it does not tell me the party affiliation of the political action committee. Without that, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to figure out what effect a political action committee will have on a given voter. But I can also eliminate B quickly because it also doesn’t obviously mention whether or not this committee is local or not, which is a decisive factor according to the passage.
C is wrong for similar reasons as B is: because I cannot assume that a voter’s family members are necessarily local. Without that key bit of information, C is a worse answer than A.
And D is wrong for the same reason: because it does not clearly fit the description of any of the “short-term forces” discussed in paragraph 4.
It’s nice when a question that can be difficult is made easy because it so clearly references the main idea. As with Q19, I know that I am looking for a situation that fits the description of “short-term” forces.
This is almost the opposite of what I need to find, since this is a description of a national movement, rather than something personal to the candidate, a local force, or some domestic or foreign policy event. A can’t be correct.
B is also a clearly bad answer choice because voter interest isn’t listed as a possible reason for why voters might depart from their party preferences.
Paragraph 4 lists the “attractiveness of the candidate” as a possible reason for why voters might not vote according to their partisan leanings, and C directly refers to “personal qualities” of Eisenhower, the candidate, that make him “attractive,” so C has to be right.
D is a wrong answer choice that is designed to trick the unwary test-taker. I know that “domestic policy issues” qualify as one of the short-term forces that could influence voters, but the passage never says anything about what the absence of domestic issues would do to voters.
Nothing here seems to directly refer to the parts of the passage that Q19 and 20 were referring to, so my best approach is to read the situation described in this question stem as referring to how voters will tend to go with their party. I can therefore assume that the right answer will say something like “voters will like an attack ad that is created by their party, or that is attacking the opposite party.”
A is perfect, since it makes sense according to the passage arguments about partisanship. I can choose it and move on.
The passage doesn’t really talk about voters who are not involved in the political process, since the passage is all about partisan voters: voters who are involved enough to pick sides. B has to be incorrect.
This does not make sense at all. Why would the voters whose candidate is being attacked like that attack ad? C has to be wrong too.
Independent voters are mentioned in the passage, but there’s nothing in the passage to suggest that they would really like an attack ad of any sort. That makes D incorrect.
Independent voters are not discussed extensively in the passage, since the passage primarily discusses non-independent voters. Since the passage does that so extensively, my best bet is to go to the answer choices and choose a behavior or trait that would not fit with partisan voters.
This is an attractive answer because the passage has a lot to say regarding how passionate partisan voters are; why wouldn’t independent voters be less passionate? The problem with A, though, is that the passage primarily discusses how attached voters are to political parties and figures; that does not necessarily mean that partisan voters care more or less about politics than independent voters, since politics involves more than just politicians. A seems tailor-made to trick me, so I will eliminate it.
I would be tempted to pass on B, except the passage does say that partisan voters quickly and instinctively react in line with their political party, so there’s at least a chance that B is right. The smart play here is to check the other two answer choices and see if they can be eliminated.
This is definitely wrong because the passage does not limit its comments regarding the effects of short-term factors on voters to just partisan voters.
D is an easy one to eliminate because the passage is so focused on how partisanship affects voters. It would go entirely against the passage description of independent voters—voters who lack partisan ties—if they behaved like partisan voters. B, then, has to be right.
This is an uncommon question type: one that is difficult because it is asking for a description of how the author feels about some part of the passage argument, or how the author deploys that part of the passage. It is therefore almost always worth going back to the passage to determine 1) how the author feels about the part of the passage referenced in the question stem, and 2) how the author actually deploys that part of the passage. The author’s discussion of short-term forces is definitive enough that the author seems sure of it, and the author does not actually support the claims about short-term forces with evidence; it’s just stated. That’s remarkable enough that I expect that the right answer will likely make reference to this.
This one is easy to eliminate because the author never discusses how politicians feel about partisanship.
Another quick elimination: this time because the author never challenges the arguments about how short-term forces can affect an election.
C fits what I’m looking for: both because it references how certain the author is about the short-term forces argument, and how the author argues the point. I can pick it and move on.
D is wrong for the same reasons that B is wrong: because the author never suggests that there is anything wrong or problematic about the idea that short-term forces would affect elections.
This is a simple passage check, so I just need to move through the options and eliminate any that are wrong. On first glance, each looks like it could work, which is impossible; the answer choices tell me that one of these has to be wrong.I. I is attractive because the passage states that stories can be told to entertain in oral cultures, but I don’t remember the passage ever mentioning that these stories were used to entertain children specifically. That makes A incorrect.
II. II has to be correct because it is mentioned in paragraph 2.
III. III is mentioned in paragraph 3, so it is also likely correct. The right answer will therefore include both II and III.
I has to be wrong, or else none of these choices can be right.
II is a good choice, but is not the only right option.
I is wrong, so C is wrong.
And D gives me what I’m looking for, and so is correct.
To answer this question, I need to determine what role stories play in oral societies, and then determine which choice best resembles that. The passage says a lot about how oral societies use stories, but they tend to boil down to conveying information: personal information, such as “Stories are frequently told as evening entertainment to pass along local or family knowledge” (paragraph 2), and information that is more useful for the society at large, for example, when the passage states that “stories often teach important lessons about a society’s culture, the land, and the ways in which members are expected to interact with each other and the environment” (paragraph 3). So I’m looking for an answer choice that resembles either of these descriptions.
This is a pretty good candidate, since it resembles that second claim from paragraph 3. Still, this has the potential to be a really difficult question, so it would make sense to eliminate the other choices.
B has to be wrong because oral narratives are part of a society’s traditions, so they would not keep people from being dependent on tradition.
C is the tempting wrong answer choice for this question because it almost resembles the first description of oral narratives from paragraph 2, but the second half of the answer choice has no obvious analogy with the passage, since the passage never talks about anyone disobeying stories.
D is also easy to eliminate because there is nothing in the passage which suggests that stories in oral societies should only talk about the best individuals in a society. I can safely choose A.
The question stem does not provide enough specific markers to predict the right answer, but the answer choices tell me that the right answer will have something to do with “oral tradition.” Of course, the entire passage is about oral tradition, so that doesn’t really narrow things down much either. Since I am looking for something that the passage supports, though, I can probably use a general understanding of the passage to answer this question: namely, that the author is invested in raising the profile of oral traditions, and to suggest that they are not inferior to written narratives.
A has to be wrong because the author mainly says good things about oral traditions, while A is a bad thing.
This is a pretty good answer choice, especially because something’s being a “collective enterprise” is typically seen as a good thing. But since the question is so broad, it might make sense to quickly eliminate the other answer choices.
C is wrong because it also suggests that there is something bad about oral societies, since we tend to think of having a small vocabulary as a bad thing. Even if that is not clearly the case, it is definitely not obviously a good thing, which makes C worse than B.
There is enough of a negative connotation to D to eliminate it quickly. Beyond that, the passage simply does not state this; there are emotional aspects to oral narratives, but no direct comparison is made between the emotional and cognitive content in stories.
This question is made more difficult because the passage says a great deal about how written and oral narratives differ. This makes elimination a better option than trying to predict the right answer. I should try to get rid of any choice which describe differences that the passage does not mention.
A confirms the validity of my strategy, because it is so easily eliminated. Tone is not an obviously important part of the passage argument.
B is a tempting answer choice because the passage does state that some oral narratives can impart morals, and it says nothing about morality and written narratives. But that absence is actually what makes B an incorrect answer, since for B to be correct, the passage would need to state that morality is unimportant to written narratives.
This is a tough answer choice, if only because “locus” is not necessarily a word people are certain to know. C’s discussion of interpretation is also in its favor, since the passage does state that readers have to interpret written texts, while storytellers are the ones who interpret the stories they orally relate. But with only one answer choice to go, I would feel much better about choosing C if I eliminate D.
D is another easy answer choice to eliminate. The passage does not clearly state that oral or written narratives are more sophisticated in form. C has to be correct.
This is just a simple passage check question because it is asking about a fairly specific detail in the passage. The second to last paragraph starts off by talking about how the landscape is used in oral narratives, and the end of the paragraph mentions that “On encountering these landmarks, individuals may recall the stories and their embedded lessons and gain insight into them over time.” So the answer has to say something like “landscapes bring specific stories to mind.”
I can easily eliminate A because it is not mentioned in relation to landscapes.
Same with B.
Same with C.
D, though, is exactly what I am looking for
The situation in the question stem suggests that I should pay attention to the part after the semicolon, when the situation gets more specific. If “the text may be different with each encounter with a reader,” I know that the author tends to think of written narratives as singular, and “static” (paragraph 5). So that new information will weaken the author’s sense of written narratives.
I can eliminate A, since it is the opposite of what I’m looking for. It is way too difficult to imagine how the situation in the question stem is in line with the author’s description of written narratives for A to be correct.
This is correct: exactly as predicted.
C has to be incorrect because the information in the question stem is too well-targeted on the author’s arguments about how written narratives have text that does not change to not affect the passage argument. An answer like C would only be correct if the situation in the question stem was out of the scope of the passage.
This is incorrect because the author never suggests that there are multiple ways to see written narratives. Since the author never discusses written text that changes, the situation in the question stem cannot repeat a point from the passage.
This is a broad question for a passage that has a lot to say about written narratives, especially in contrast to oral ones, so the most efficient way to approach this question is to eliminate the wrong answers.
This is incorrect because the author never says anything about written narratives somehow departing from their facts. The notion that written stories are lies is a strong enough claim that I can trust that I would have remembered the passage stating that.
This is immediately attractive because it seems in line with the author’s project in this passage: to deprivilege the written narrative, which is seen as authoritative and objective. B is discussed directly in the last paragraph: “Critics wary of oral history tend to frame oral history as subjective and biased, in comparison to written history, presumed to be rational and objective. In Western contexts, authors of written documents may be received automatically as authorities on their subjects and what is written down taken as fact. Such assumptions ignore the fact that authors of written documents bring their own experiences, agendas, and biases to their work.” That last sentence suggests that authors of written narratives are also subjective, while the author does not deny that oral narratives have subjective elements; that’s enough to make B feel correct.
This is the tempting wrong answer choice for this question, because the author is clearly unhappy that written narratives are “presumed to be rational and objective.” But the author does not actually suggest that written narratives are not authoritative; the author is primarily concerned with the assumption that they are. Written narratives may very well be authoritative according to the passage, but the author would prefer that that authority be earned.
The passage articulates no strong links between oral and written narratives, so D is clearly wrong.