It is a little tough to predict what the right answer will be for this question because the passage says a lot about clinical practice; the vast majority of the passage focuses on it. To help predict the right answer, then, I should 1) keep the main idea in mind—in this case, that good medical practice should involve both clinical experience and evidence-based practice—and 2) remember the major point about clinical experience: that though it has its good points, it has problems.
A is a great candidate for the right answer because it is a strong implication of the middle paragraphs. The author would not feel the need to explain the problems with clinical experience if some physicians did not think that clinical experience was better than research experience, and if that belief was not justified. But this is the first question in the set, so eliminating the wrong answers to gain some confidence in my reading of the passage is a pretty good idea.
This is easy to eliminate if I am reading the passage properly. B is mentioned, but it is not mentioned as the author’s perspective; it is instead attributed to “economists and other health experts.” I can also confirm that B is not correct because the author does go on to list some of the positive aspects of clinical experience.
C is similar enough to B—insofar as both are making value judgments—that I can eliminate it right away. “Overly complex” is a bad thing, and while the author definitely thinks that there are problems with clinical experience, C, like B, goes too far. More specifically, C distorts paragraph 2, which just states that clinical experience “is based on a complex interweaving of observations.” But just because the interweaving is “complex,” that does not mean that it is “overly” complex.
D is easy to eliminate because the passage simply doesn’t state this. Intuitions do inform clinical experience (as does judgment and values), but that is not the same as suggesting that physicians rely on clinical experience because they want to rely on their own intuitions.
A quick glance at the answer choices confirms that this is an analogy question; to answer it, I need to understand the bias described in paragraph 3, and then find an answer choice which resembles that bias. In paragraph 3, the bias is described as emerging when one works “without the benefit of a control group for comparison—a central requirement of evidence-based medicine that is rarely possible in clinical practice” which makes one “unable to tell whether a treatment is responsible for a cure or if the natural history of the disorder explains the results.” However, rather than accept that one cannot make this distinction, the bias seems to involve “This false attribution of the results of therapy”: in other words, an error that suggests that a patient got better because of therapy, as opposed to a number of other factors. This paragraph and the one before it imply that physicians do this because they have an interest in seeing that their therapies work, so I need to find an answer choice in which some effect is not clearly the result of a cause, but that someone decides is still the result of that cause because they want it to be.
A is almost the opposite of what I am looking for, because the flutist isn’t assuming an unjustified explanation for her inconsistency because she wants to. I need an answer choice which describes someone mistakenly explaining something when they cannot justifiably do so.
B is worth immediately eliminating because it introduces a factor that is not in the passage: the coach. There is no outside factor telling the doctor that they are mistaken in their beliefs, so that is enough to make B wrong. B is also wrong because the pole vaulter is failing in her endeavors, but what makes the “illusory correlation bias” so powerful is that doctors are getting results which can be interpreted as them succeeding. B is therefore like A: the opposite of what I’m looking for.
C can be quickly eliminated because the teacher is not coming to any mistaken conclusions, which is a key element of the “bias.” D has to be right.
Thankfully, D is clearly the right answer. Here, just like the doctor, the trainer assumes that their training is what got the dog to lie down on command, when there is some ambiguity that needs to be clarified before the trainer can justifiably make that claim: whether or not the dog is lying down because of the command, or because the dog is tired after a walk.
Paragraph 4 is part of the passage’s extended argument against assuming that clinical experience is without flaw, so I can safely assume that the right answer will have something to do with that. A quick glance back at paragraph 4 confirms this: the “role of chance” is there to suggest that doctors who rely on clinical experience are overestimating their successes by ignoring the possibility that something else may have helped cure their patients.
This is a perfect answer choice, because it is exactly what I predicted. However, B does mention “sample size,” which is also mentioned in the same sentence as “the role of chance,” so I might only feel better about choosing A if I scanned the rest of the choices.
I can’t easily see how the author mentions “the role of chance” as a response to people’s worries that clinicians use sample sizes that are too small. The two are actually two sides of the same problem. Since one is not clearly responding to the other, I can safely eliminate B.
I can eliminate C quickly because it is part of an argument that does the opposite: that argues against those who might think that clinical experience superior to evidence-based medicine.
This is also an attractive answer, because the passage strongly links intuition with relying on clinical experience. However, “the role of chance” is not clearly targeted as the reliance of intuition. More importantly, D distorts the passage argument, since the author is not arguing against the broad use of intuition; paragraph 1 actually implies that intuition probably does play some role in good medical practice. The author’s problem is with doctors who only rely on intuition: who believe that it is sufficient to be a good doctor. Since D goes too far, it has to be incorrect.
This is such a specific reference that it makes sense to refer to the passage, even if I took notes on the Norway example. In the last paragraph, Norway is brought up as an example of the problems with an evidence-based approach. Specifically, the passage states that “Norway, for instance, is discouraging the use of the osteoporotic agent alendronate; although the drug decreases hip fractures, ninety high-risk women would have to be treated with the drug for three years to prevent one hip fracture at a cost that could bankrupt the country’s medical plan.”
Clinical practice isn’t even mentioned in the paragraph where Norway is mentioned, so there’s no obvious way that it could be correct.
The example of Norway actually suggests that there are issues with evidence-based medicine, so it is not an example of it in practice.
This isn’t what I was expecting because it doesn’t make direct reference to the main idea, but C has to be right, since the Norway example is actually about the cost of the drug, and needing to account for it.
This is an answer choice that is meant to catch less careful test-takers. People might choose D because they know that the example does suggest that there is something wrong with the drug mentioned. However, the problem is not with the drug’s effectiveness: it is rather with how much it costs. D therefore has to be wrong.
To answer this question, I first need to understand what effect the information in the question stem would have on the passage (if any). I know that the passage spends most of its time raising concerns with clinically-based models of care, but that it does not go onto suggest that evidence-based models are necessarily better. So what I’m looking for is some answer choice that refers to the notion that evidence-based models of care are better than clinically-based models.
A is immediately wrong because the situation in the question stem supports the use of clinically-based models, which the clinicians described in A believe in (since “sacrosanct” means to hold sacred).
It’s sort of kind of the test-makers to include an answer choice that mentions Norway after a question that refers to it. I know from my work on the previous question that Norway is brought up in the last paragraph as evidence for some of the weaknesses of evidence-based medicine. There is no clear reason why the corrective taken against an evidence-based approach in Norway would not work, since the information in the question stem could be read to imply that clinically-based models address problems with evidence-based models.
On first glance, I might not necessarily remember the views of economists and health experts; a quick glance back at the passage states that “economists and other health experts often view the enigmatic and seemingly unpredictable use of clinical judgment as analogous to an over-amplified performance of rock music: uncontrollable, chaotic, and obeying few rules.” In other words, economists and health experts look down on clinical judgment, and do not think it works. Since the information in the passage suggests the opposite, it challenges those two groups of people. C has to be right.
The information in the question stem would actually weaken the main idea of the passage, since that main idea depends on there being problems when a physician exclusively employs either clinically-based models of care or evidence-based models. The overall passage argument implies that doing both together helps to compensate for the weaknesses in each approach. So if one approach is better than the other, the main argument loses its primary support. D therefore has to be wrong.
This very clinical passage has a very clear main argument: that performance suffers if the performer believes they are performing before a supportive audience. So though Q6 is an analogy question—a traditionally difficult question type, and one that the answer choices here make a bit more difficult by each providing two options—I actually feel pretty good about this being the first question, since it will help me confirm that I know the main argument. I am just looking for an answer that involves some clear marker that the lawyer is not presenting in front of a supportive audience.
A lacks any mention of a supportive audience, or really an audience at all, so it has to be wrong.
B is a great answer choice because it contrasts the judge being unknown to the lawyer, and them having a relationship that is one step closer to supportive. I would choose B with confidence.
C is meant to be tempting because it focuses on audience, but if I (and the lawyer) do not know the sympathies of the audience, then I cannot know whether or not the first situation or the second will be better for the lawyer.
D is also meant to trick me because it echoes the passage, which states that Experiment 1 used a one-way mirror. But the passage does not distinguish between different ways that the audience could be present to the performer; what matters is how the performer understands the sympathies of that audience. D has to be wrong, and B right.
This question asks me to infer an explanation that is not offered in the passage. I know that performers were slower when they believed they were performing for their friends, so I need to find an answer that reflects this situation.
This is pretty good, in part because people who are “relaxed” tend to act more slowly. I kind of like A, but this is a difficult question and so it’s worth checking out the rest.
B is also actually kind of tempting; maybe the performer slows down in order to avoid making errors in front of their friends, for fear of their judgment. Since I have two tempting answers, I should go through the rest and see if any others are tempting before trying to decide which choice is right.
I can eliminate C because paragraph 4 directly claims that supported participants were less likely to say that they were distracted. That leaves open the possibility that they are lying or are just unaware of how distracted they really were, but that requires a greater leap in logic than A and B do, so that’s enough to eliminate C for me.
D is easy to eliminate, since it does not have anything to do with friends and strangers.So now, having to choose between A and B, A requires fewer steps to justify the answer. Being slow is implied by the word “relaxed,” while nothing in B directly implies a reduction in speed. I have to take an extra rhetorical step with B: to guess that being judged harshly might slow someone down. That therefore makes A a better answer choice than B. The general rule of thumb to follow is: the more steps you have to take to make an answer choice look right, the less likely that answer choice is correct.
To answer this question, it helps to distinguish Experiment 2 from Experiment 1. The major difference between the two experiments is that Experiment 2 1) doesn’t involve one’s friends, and 2) involves some form of direct compensation for success. It would also help to know what Experiment 2 showed: that “it confirmed the prediction that a skilled performance would suffer with a supportive audience” (paragraph 6). That should hopefully be enough to find an answer.
There are no supportive friends in Experiment 2, so A is wrong.
B is closer because it mentions strangers, but I know that the experience does not talk about performance benefits; the author is only looking to confirm that performances suffer when done before supportive audiences. B is therefore definitely not what I’m looking for.
This has to be right, since Experiment 2 showed that performance suffered when strangers were going to benefit: a version of being supportive.
This has to be wrong because the performer was going to benefit from success in both cases: regardless of whether or not audience members were going to benefit as well. If Experiment 2 was trying to study D, then the experiment was badly constructed.
This question adds new information to the passage; I need to figure out what effect it has on the passage argument. If a hostile audience produces the same results as a supportive audience, then that obviously suggests that it is not just support which degrades a performance. I therefore need an answer choice that will say something about how performance is hurt by people who have strong feelings—or feelings at all, maybe—about the performer.
A has to be wrong because the question stem very specifically says that hostile audiences affect performances; they affect them negatively.
I knew this already from the passage, and it has nothing to do with the newly added information, so even though B is true, it is also wrong.
This is what I’m looking for, since “involved” is one way to describe an audience that both loves and hates the performer. I can pick C and move on.
D is a classic trap answer choice for a passage like this. Just because performances did not suffer in front of audiences of strangers, that does not suggest that one will perform better than usual if one performs in front of strangers. A good general rule of thumb to follow: the absence of a negative is not, in and of itself, proof of a positive.
This is a straightforward weakener, but one that gives no real way to predict what the right answer might look like. So to answer Q10, I just need to filter through the answer choices and look for the one that would negatively affect the main argument: that performance suffers when done in front of one’s supporters.
A is easy to eliminate because it relies on a classic confusion that the passage actually mentions. The two experiments primarily discuss how the actors actually performed; whether or not they felt more confident or even less confident would not obviously affect the author’s conclusions about their actual performance. It is possible to feel really good about a terrible performance, or really bad about a great one. More specifically, paragraph 4 rules A out, since it claims that actors were not aware of how they were being affected by their audiences. That also means that the passage conclusions do not depend on how the actors felt.
This is not an immediately great answer, since the passage never mentions performing alone, but that is actually what makes this correct. The passage presents a binary: either an actor performs in front of strangers, or supporters. Because performers performed worse when they were in front of supports, the passage author can conclude that having a supportive audience negatively affects one’s performance. But if people performed better with a friend than when they were alone, that negative effect is less clear: both because B very directly mentions how performing before a supportive audience can have a positive effect, and because it introduces a new variable that disrupts that simple binary by suggesting that there may be benefits to playing in front of supporters. B weakens the passage by muddying its logic; I would choose it and move on.
I can eliminate C because nothing in the two experiments depends on who performers would invite. The author is clearly describing two contrived situations in the two experiments: contrived so that the author can draw justifiable conclusions from them. So a choice like C, which describes what people “normally” do, wouldn’t affect the passage.
I can eliminate D because nothing in the passage mentions “household tasks,” or anything like chores. Since D doesn’t really talk about the passage argument, it can’t weaken it.
This question resembles Q7, which also asked me to come up with an explanation for some outcome. The statements given after Experiment 1 are in paragraph 4, and they mainly focus on how unaware performers were of the effects of audiences on their performance. It also says that, when performing in front of friends, performers were “less likely than those in the neutral-audience condition to report feeling distracted by the observer or feeling stress while doing the task.” That implies that they were more distracted or stressed out in front of strangers, even though they performed better in front of them. Since that is counterintuitive—one would expect the opposite, that performers would do better when they were less distracted or stressed—I can therefore deduce that performance and feelings about performance may not have much to do with each other.
And A is exactly what I’m looking for, since it says that performance is not necessarily affected feelings about one’s performance (anxiety). I would choose A and move on.
B is immediately wrong because I know that the lower stress environment produced worse results. More broadly, the experiment is not actually about reducing anxiety, so I cannot justify B.
C is an attractive answer choice because the supportive audience produced less anxiety, and because the audience affected the performance (negatively). But C is wrong for the same reason B is wrong: because the experiment does not study anxiety reduction. It is not as if the performers go from a state of greater anxiety to lesser anxiety during the course of the experiment; those who performed in front of friends were just less stressed, and those who performed in front of strangers were just more stressed. Without an actual experiment which tries to change stress levels in a single participant, C cannot be right.
D is also an attractive answer choice, making this easily the hardest question in the set. However, D has to be wrong because the author goes to great lengths to separate how one performs from how one feels during the performance in paragraph 4: “The participants’ answers to post-experimental questions indicated that they were not aware of the effect of the observer on their performance.” To draw a connection between how an audience makes a performer feel and that performer’s performance requires strong argumentation that the passage simply lacks. D is a far bolder claim than A is, and bolder claims are harder to justify. So A is a better answer than D.
Given how hard Q11 was, it makes sense that the test-makers would give an easy Q12. I know from an earlier question that the purpose of experiment to was to confirm “the prediction that a skilled performance would suffer with a supportive audience” (paragraph 6).
The passage does not mention the intensity or genuineness of audience support; audiences are either supportive or not. So I can eliminate A quickly.
B is also quickly eliminated because Experiment 2 does not discuss reasons for being cautious.
This is a more tempting answer choice because the experiment does involve an incentive, but here my work from Q8 really helps, since it made me pay attention to the fact that the performer was guaranteed an incentive in the two situations that were being compared. Since both groups had incentives, the experiment could not be testing for the effects of incentives on performance.
This is the best answer, even though Experiment 2 specifically excludes friends from the audience. This is because the experiment is attempting to determine the effect of friendship on performers in case the presence of friends was somehow a problem for Experiment 1. By shifting to strangers, Experiment 2 could properly test whether the negative effects on performance were due to having audiences of friends, or having audiences that were just supportive of the performer. D therefore has to be correct.
I know that the passage is focused on the audience reaction to a piece of art, and their ability to apprehend or be sensitive to the art: that people will only appreciate art that they can understand. So I can be pretty sure that if a musician receives “no applause for their performance,” it is probably not the musicians’ fault; it is probably, instead, the fault of the audience in some way.
A has to be wrong because it blames the artist, and not the audience.
Same problem.
Same problem.
This is the best answer because it is the only one that blames the audience for the situation. I can choose D with confidence and move on.
This question type asks me to understand the impact the information in the question stem would have on the passage argument. By keeping in mind the author’s main idea—that people can appreciate art if they develop “the personal capacity to receive and enjoy”—I can deduce that the information in this question stem is in keeping with the passage argument, since the sailors most likely appreciate seascapes because that is what they are most prepared to appreciate: what their personal lives have prepared them to enjoy. I am therefore looking for an answer which claims that the situation in the question stem would support the passage argument.
A fits what I am looking for, so I would choose it and move on.
This is the opposite of what I’m looking for.
While the author mentions C, I can’t be sure that the sailors chose seascapes because they’re beautiful. That makes C wrong.
D is easy to eliminate because the question stem gives me no information about what is popular.
The right answer to this question type needs to meet two criteria: to be implied by the passage, and to contain two statements that contradict each other. Without more markers specific to the passage, my best bet is to try to eliminate answers that do not fulfill both of these criteria.
A can be eliminated because it fails to meet the first criterion. The passage does not compare poetry and visual art.
The passage actually argues against the first statement, which makes B wrong. The entire point of the passage is that non-artists—the audience for pieces of art—can appreciate art on the basis of their personal biases and sensitivities.
The author states the opposite of the first statement in the first paragraph: “There is no single invariable standard by which to try a work of art.” C has to be wrong, then.
D needs to be right, and so it is. D meets the first criterion because the passage mentions the first claims in paragraphs 2-4, and mentions the second statement in paragraph 1. D also meets the second criterion because being able to only appreciate what we recognize means only appreciating what is not new, which would contradict the second statement.
This sounds like an analogy question, but it’s really just asking me to apply the reasoning in the passage. So I need to find an answer choice which discusses appreciating art on the basis of what I do, or am personally biased towards.
A makes perfect sense, since the more I dance, the more I become familiar with dancing, and the more I become familiar with dancing, the more I should appreciate it. I would choose A and move on.
B is a tempting wrong answer because one can imagine that one’s parents might teach you to enjoy music if they enjoy music. But that presumes a lot that is not explicitly stated in the passage: more than A does. Since it is possible that a child might lack traits shared by the child’s parents, B is worse than A.
Thinking is mentioned in the passage, but it is given as something which is needed to appreciate art (paragraph 2), so C actually goes against the passage, and can be eliminated.
The passage does not really mention trying to do several things, and it has nothing to do with one’s personal preferences, so D is an easy answer choice to eliminate.
Another broad question. My best bet is to just keep the main idea in mind, and test each of the answer choices to see if they are in line with the reasoning in the passage.
I can’t see how the passage talks about right or wrong, so A is immediately incorrect.
B mentions appreciation, and the author is definitely in favor of artistic appreciation, so B already looks quite tempting. Still, this is a difficult question, so I should eliminate the other choices before choosing B.
The author mentions both artists and audiences, and the passage argument hinges on there being some kind of difference between artists and audiences, since the author feels the need to account for how the latter might appreciate art. C therefore cannot be right, since the passage suggests there are humans who are not artists.
What? This is such a random choice that it gives me pause, and makes me wonder if there is any way it could be right. Paragraph 4, luckily, contradicts D when it says that in a tree or the sky there is “something of that eternal significance of which these things are the material visible bodying forth.” In other words, a tree is not just a tree: it is also suggesting of something eternal. D is wrong.
This is a really tough passage because its main idea is difficult to determine. This question is also difficult, because there are no mentions in the passage of sixteenth-century monasteries, and too many mentions of monasteries to track down the right answer. This may be a good question to let the answer choices guide my inquiry: to try to eliminate my way down.
Since pilgrims come to the remote island discussed in the passage, the passage actually suggests the opposite of A.
Though nothing stands out about this choice to either suggest that it is obviously right or wrong, it at least gives me something to focus on. The last paragraph starts with a mention of that very provocative word, “eremitical”: “The eremitical fire lasted until the fourteenth century; then the rock reverted to the fish hawks. All across Europe, the dark, shadowy oratories of hermits were superseded by the grandiloquent visual poems of the urban cathedrals. Yet in the eighteenth century the Skellig became a popular place of pilgrimage.” B helps me to notice that the last paragraph suggests that there is a gap in the period when monasteries would have been popular between the 14th and 18th centuries. Since the question stem asks about the 16th century, I can deduce that the monastery described in the question stem would have been surprising because monasteries were just not built between the 14th and 18th centuries. B has to be right, though with a question this hard, it makes sense to confirm the wrong answers.
C is clearly wrong because it employs a classic distortion. Olav Trygvasson may have helped keep Skellig going, but nothing in the passage suggests that monasteries were only established in the region by Trygvasson, so there is no reason why C would be right.
My first question is, why not? After all, monks learned of the island that the passage is about, which is also off the coast of Europe. D has to be wrong.
This is a really challenging version of the analogy question, since being able to predict the right answer to an analogy question depends on my ability to discern an argument. This passage’s arguments are slight and difficult to pin down. The question helps me out a little bit by making such a specific reference: to the birds of Skellig Michael. Looking back at the passage, the birds are mentioned in paragraph 2: “It is difficult to understand the monks’ choice of this site (or their ability to live here); the place is only fit for birds.” The monks, in other words, are encroaching or encountering animals in their natural habitat: a place that is “fit” for them. So I am looking for an answer choice that refers to people coming to a place that is not natural for them, and seeing some kind of animal or thing that is native to that place.
I have no clue if butterflies are native to Newfoundland, which makes A a good candidate for a wrong answer. Also, I do know that entomologists study butterflies, while the passage does not state that the monks studied the birds. Since A suggests a relationship between its two elements that the passage does not, A has to be wrong.
I can easily eliminate B because helicopters are not natural to any place.
This is a great candidate for the right answer. I know that penguins are native to Antarctica, and that explorers, like the monks, would be encroaching on these birds in a place that was not native to human life. But since this is such a difficult question, I should just quickly eliminate D to be sure.
I don’t know if cattle are native to Montana; maybe they are because the land has been farmed for so long. But even if I accept that the cattle are analogous to Skellig Michael’s birds, Montana is not a remote place in the same way that Antarctica and Skellig Michael are remote. Also, there is the possibility of a symbiotic relationship in D that is not clearly the case between the monks and the birds. Cattle may eat the wheat grown by the farmers, but the birds derive no benefits from the monks. That’s more than enough to make D a worse answer choice than C. C has to be correct.
This would normally be an easy question type, except that the passage is very elliptical, and so does not directly state why the monastery was placed where it was. But the passage does give some hints: how the monastery was a place for hermits, and how “Young men ran away to solitude as later they would run away to sea, and young women sequestered themselves in convents as evidence of their piety” (paragraph 4). If people came to Skellig to find “solitude,” then I just need to find an answer which mentions the desire to be alone, or the isolation of the place.
Nice trick answer choice here. Needle’s Eye is mentioned in the last paragraph as a reason why Skellig Michael became important again during the eighteenth century, but it is not identified as a reason why people originally selected the island to host a monastery. A has to be wrong.
This is a great answer choice because it is what I was looking for, since it talks about isolation, which would provide the “solitude” sought by the young men in paragraph 4. I would choose B and move on.
C has to be wrong because the passage mentions that Vikings “sacked Skellig Michael numerous times” (paragraph 5).
Another tempting answer choice, since the passage mentions that it was a hard place to live in. But for D to be correct, the passage would have to provide a more direct suggestion that hermits wanted to suffer, which the passage does not do. D is therefore incorrect.
This is another challenging question because of how challenging the passage is. I know that the use of Skellig Michael as a place of pilgrimage is mentioned in the last paragraph, but there are just facts in that paragraph: no explanation or speculation with regards to why pilgrims sought the place out. My best bet, then, is to keep the spirit of the question in mind and look for an answer choice which makes Skellig Michael an attractive place to visit.
A would definitely make the place attractive; it even uses the word. For that reason alone, A is a great answer choice, but I should check the others just to be sure.
I’m not sure why this would make the hermitages attractive for pilgrims. To see B as a correct answer, I would need to add some reasoning—that people may want to visit sites that resemble those in Egypt—while I did not need to add any reasoning onto A to choose it. That automatically makes A a better answer choice: because I do not need to work as hard to convince myself that it is correct.
Again, in order to justify C—since nothing in C specifically mentions the site being attractive—I need to add a reason: in this case, that maybe pilgrims wanted to visit a place where the first Christian king of Norway was baptized. Since I had to do that, C has to be wrong.
D is wrong because it does not address what the question is asking. Just because monasteries were being built in many different isolated places, that does not by itself help explain why pilgrims “particularly” favored Skellig: that is, favored Skellig over other remote monasteries. Without a more direct reference to the place (like A has), D cannot be right.
This is a very specific detail from the passage, so I should check the reference. Luckily, it is at the very end of the passage: “Penitents from across Europe not only traveled out to the rock but made the grueling 700-foot climb to the Needle’s Eye, its precipitous westernmost peak. The ordeal required the devout to crawl onto a horizontal slab of rock that projects with a dizzy precariousness from the summit and kiss a stone cross affixed to the end of the slab.” Since those who kiss the cross are called “Penitents,” that means they were people who were seeking forgiveness for committing some wrong.
Easy elimination, since sainthood is not mentioned anywhere near the reference to kissing the stone cross.
B is exactly what I was looking for, since it fits the description of penitents, so it makes sense to pick it and move on.
This wrong answer choice is almost certainly put here to make this question a little bit easier: to reward good test takers. An earlier question asked about almost the same detail from the passage, and was similarly wrong. In this case, the Vikings are mentioned in the paragraph before the last one, and does not have anything to do with kissing the cross.
This is also not mentioned in the last paragraph, so it cannot be correct.
I can guess from my general knowledge of the passage that few monks lived at Skellig Michael, so the question becomes why so few did. Scanning the passage with this in mind, the closest information I can find is in paragraph 3: “Most of the rock is too steep for human habitation. At no time could the little cluster of cells have sheltered more than a dozen monks.” This discussion of habitation is elaborated in paragraph 2: “The Skellig monks built their tiny windowless cells on a shelf of sandstone hardly wide enough to recline on.” So my best guess going into the answer choices is that the right answer should have something to do with limited space.
This is a tempting answer choice because one may intuitively believe that if there is not much habitable land, there might not be much land to grow and store food and water on. This seems backed up by paragraph 2: “They packed seaweed into chinks in the cliff face to make a garden.” However, that belief is one that I need to add to the passage in order to make A look correct, which should make me wary of choosing A. My best course of action is to scan the other answer choices and figure out if another choice is more obviously correct.
This another tempting answer choice, because the passage states that “Access to the island by wicker boat would have been infrequent and dangerous,” and one might guess that food and water may needed to have been brought by boat, so perhaps the island could only support a few people. But none of that intermediate reasoning is mentioned in the passage, which means I should be as suspicious of B as I am of A.
C is exactly what I am looking for, and I do not need to add any other explanations that are not already given in the passage to make C look correct. I should choose C and move on.
B is a bit of a twist on C, since the limited living space is the reason why the buildings were precariously situated. But, again, like A and B, I need to add a reason not given in the passage to make D look correct: that the precariousness of the buildings perhaps made the place either unattractive to live in, or too dangerous for too many people. Since D has a similar problem to A and B, D has to be incorrect.
The passage’s discussion of typical explanations for why older rock songwriters are less creative is in paragraph 1: “Many explanations have been offered by other music historians for these declines, but these explanations have invariably been specific to the individual artists in question.” Rather than study individual artists, the author instead argues that these artists are not prey to “factors unique to individuals, or even to rock music. Instead, these artists appear to be prime examples of the loss of conceptual creativity with age, one of the most pervasive patterns in human creativity.” Since the author seeks to generalize—to talk about more than just individual musicians, and even about more than just musicians—the artist is accusing the typical explanations of being too narrow and individualized.
A is perfect, since another way to say that something is too narrow and individualized is to say that it does not generalize enough. A is right.
B is the opposite of what I’m looking for, since the author wants to get away from studying individuals.
C is easy to eliminate because the author never mentions anything about the “stereotyped life of rock artists” in the first paragraph.
D has a similar problem: nothing like it is mentioned in the passage. The passage also contradicts D, since the author argues that the drop in creativity experienced by these musicians is not limited to rock musicians or rock music.
I know that the author makes a distinction between typical musicians and conceptual ones. This distinction is most clarified by the last paragraph: “Traditional artists’ work tends to improve with age, as they gain a greater understanding both of their subject and of their art […] In contrast, conceptual artists’ work tends to deteriorate with experience, as they lose the freshness of their early approach and become constrained by acquired habits of thought.” Paragraph 3 suggests that artists who wrote songs for musical comedies were traditional artists, and so the information in the question stem supports the passage’s claims about those artists.
James Miller is mentioned in paragraph 5, but he talks about conceptual artists, while I am looking for a choice that discusses traditional artists. A has to be wrong.
B is wrong for the same reason A is: because I need to find a choice that discusses traditional artists.
This is correct.
D is incorrect because the information in the question stem clearly affects the passage arguments. It speaks too directly to those opinions for D to be correct.
It’s nice of the test-makers to give me a question that builds so directly on the last question. The Golden Era songwriters were also those who wrote for musicals, so I know they are traditional musicians. Furthermore, I also know that these musicians wrote music that “were intended to advance the plots of those productions and to develop their characters. Furthermore, they were written to be sung by professional actors and might even have been tailored to the personalities and abilities of specific singers” (paragraph 3). In other words, these traditional artists are coming in for musicals that are in production, and that involve “professional actors.”
Nothing in the passage suggests that these traditional artists were inexperienced.
This is the best answer, since it would make sense that these songwriters would be for hire: would be writing music as part of their jobs, as opposed to some search for personal fulfillment.
C is a bit close to A, insofar as both suggest that these are not great artists. C is therefore wrong for the same reason A is.
These songwriters are working, so why would they be former artists? D has to be wrong.
To figure this out, I just need to make sure I know what makes for a good conceptual artist. Paragraph 4 gives a definition: “Artists as different as Dylan and Lennon were concerned with creating new art forms with little regard for, or knowledge of, traditional rules and constraints.” So I need to just find a choice that contradicts this definition in some way.
It’s hard to see why A would be a mistake. Conceptual artists are listed as being commercially successful, so why wouldn’t an agent be useful for a conceptual artist? A therefore has to be wrong.
This directly contradicts the definition of a conceptual artist. If conceptual artists create “new art forms with little regard for, or knowledge of, traditional rules and constraints,” an academic education will likely mainly involve teaching “traditional rules and constraints.” Such an education, then, would likely undo part of what makes these artists conceptual, and so the author would likely think B was a mistake. This is a clear enough right answer that I could choose it confidently and move on.
The main argument claims that conceptual artists get worse as they get older, so the author would likely also discourage this artist from “pacing herself”: from slowing down to a more sustainable pace of work. C is therefore correct.
I can’t see a good reason why the author would object to this. Keeping a diary is so far out of the scope of the passage argument that there is no clear reason why the author would think this is folly.
This is a nice straightforward weakener, so I should just be ready with the passage argument in mind. I should also be ready to eliminate any choice which does not weaken the passage: that either strengthens it, or are out of scope.
The passage mentions something like A, but I can’t clearly see how A would weaken the passage. Maybe one can argue that democracy is a concept, and the songs in the Great American Songbook are traditional songs by definition and so were not created by conceptual artists, but nothing in the passage argues that a traditional song cannot involve concepts of any kind. I’m inclined to look for something better than A.
I have no idea how B would affect the passage argument, since it doesn’t really seem to matter who popularized those songs. B has to be wrong.
C also lacks a clear relationship to the passage. Why would it matter if the Great American Songbook songwriters wrote multiple songs?
That leaves D, which may not look like a great answer choice right off the bat. But if I ask the obvious question—what does the age of the songwriters have to do with the passage argument?—I am reminded of how much the passage discusses age: that traditional artists tend to get better as they get older, while conceptual artists develop quickly, and then lose creativity with age. If these iconically traditional artists were young when they contributed to the Great American Songbook, that challenges the passage argument that traditional artists grow better with age. After all, if that were true, then a songbook full of traditional songs should contain works by older songwriters, right? D therefore has to be the right answer.
To answer this question, I just need to understand the reasoning that underlies Plato’s claim. This argument is given in paragraph 3, where Plato is said to have argued that “debating sharpened memories, corrected misconceptions, and produced truth. Writing ‘remembered’ for people and could be misread, misconstrued, or misused. Text and reader could not argue, making erroneous readings undetectable. Only through speech were errors so correctable that truth could emerge.” So I am looking for an analogous situation: one in which people would choose to interact more actively than writing allows.
This is incorrect because Plato was talking about being active in a debate, not just listening to one. He seems to want active listeners, while A makes listeners passive.
This answer choice is meant to be attractive because it mentions Plato’s work, but that’s actually a good reason to be suspicious of it, since there is no reason why the right answer needs to include a direct reference to Plato. Since B involves discussing written works, and Plato comes off pretty strongly against writing, B has enough problematic elements to be wrong.
C still involves writing, and so is not likely to be correct.
D, however, is perfect, since instead of writing, it involves dialogue and debate. It has to be correct.
One of the central elements of the passage is how it identifies a divide between Western European countries and other countries, which write “phonetically,” and savages and barbicans who write “ideographically” (last paragraph). Since Esperanto is compiled from Western European alphabets, it is likely a phonetic language.
This is the opposite of what I’m looking for, since the passage identifies a contrast between Western European alphabets and non-Western European languages.
This is what I’m looking for, but C looks good as well, so I should check it before choosing B.
Morphemes are mentioned in the passage as something that ideographic scripts lack, which does imply that Western European alphabets have morphemes (paragraph 2). But since B and C cannot both be right, and because B implicitly includes both morphemes and phonemes—since the passage claims that to learn a language phonetically is to learn its morphemes—while C only mentions one of them, B has to be the better answer, and C incorrect.
This is most clearly attributed to Egyptian, Chinese, and Mayan, but it is not clearly related to Western European languages. I can also eliminate D because I know that A is wrong.
I know from my reading of the passage that the misunderstanding of Egyptian writing is mentioned in paragraph 5. The only direct reference to a mistake, though, is the reference to Athanasius Kircher: “He translated one inscription, which actually spelled out the titles of pharaoh Psamtjik, as instructions on securing divine protection from the god Osiris instead.” So I can bet that the right answer will likely involve Kircher.
This is the actual misunderstanding, and so it cannot be support for the misunderstanding. That makes A wrong.
This is what I’m looking for, and so is what I would choose.
These languages are not actually ideographic, so C is wrong.
And D has to be wrong because the author implies that Kircher was wrong about Egyptian writing, insofar as Kircher misunderstood the inscription about the pharaoh as part of his explanation for why Egyptian writing was ideographic.
The quoted passage requires an answer choice that includes 2 elements: something which suggests that Egyptian culture was once great, and something that mentions that Egyptian culture was diminished by European culture.
This implies a non-confrontational relationship between Egyptian and Classical cultures, which is the opposite of what the right answer needs to have.
B does not contain a clear reference to the “Classical world” (the Europeans), and so cannot be correct.
This is a great candidate for the right answer, since it refers to Europeans—Alexander the Great and the Romans—acting in a hostile way towards Egyptian culture.
D lacks any reference to Egyptian culture, so it’s also wrong.
The only way to answer this question is to evaluate the options while keeping paragraphs 4-5 in mind.Kircher’s claim that the Psamtjik inscription listed his titles: I does not clearly support the idea that Egyptian script is ideographic because, as an earlier question addressed, Kircher was mistaken about the inscription—did not think it was a list of titles—so the right answer cannot involve I.
Kircher’s reputation as a scholar and scientist: Kircher did absolutely contribute to the belief that the Egyptian script was ideographic, which makes II correct.
Missionaries’ reports on Chinese and Mayan scripts: III also has to be correct because it is mentioned just after the reference to Kircher, while making the same point. So I am looking for a choice that includes both options II and III.
A has to be incorrect because I is factually incorrect.
Same with B.
C is therefore the only option that can be right, and it fits my projection.
D is also wrong because it contains I.
Though this question refers to a specific place in the passage, the “game” is very much the main subject of the passage: the notion that the writer writes to a fictional audience that “is not actually present during the writing process” (paragraph 2). I know this because the “game” is elaborated on basically until paragraph 5, when the author gives me a specific instance of the “game” until the last paragraph.
A fits what I am looking for, since it mentions the writer writing for an audience that is not present: that the author has to imagine.
I can eliminate B because the author describes no such contest; the closest the author gets is the end of paragraph 2, when the author states that “the fictional reader is inevitably cast in some sort of role not occupied in real life. He or she must either play along with it or put down the book,” but that does not clearly imply some competition between them.
This is an answer choice that is meant to be tempting because it vaguely echoes the first sentence of the passage: “we find that readers have had to be trained gradually to play a game writers necessarily engage in.” But there is no clear sense that writers are trying to trick audiences. The passage instead suggests that the “game” is played out of necessity: that writers have to define their audiences in order to write.
This choice is meant to be tempting because it echoes the end of the passage. But the second half of the last paragraph—where this practice is mentioned—shifts to talking about the history of written narrative; it is probably the only part of the passage that does not talk about the game. D therefore has to be wrong.
This is another straightforward main idea question. From just reading the passage, I know that a fictional audience is described as someone that the author imagines they are writing for. So I need an answer that involves some sort of projected audience for a book.
A is incorrect because, while this is an audience, it is not fictional.
B has the same problem that A does; both describe actual audiences, not fictional ones.
This is a great candidate for the right answer because the audience is not actual; these are people who are not physically present or even very specific, but they have to be imagined by the writers of the sitcom when they are creating the show. The people in C pre-exist the show, just as the fictional readers of a Hemingway novel preexist the novel, so C has to be correct.
D is tricky because this audience is also not present, but they also do not preexist the show, or are the target of the show. These are actual audience members. D is also a bad answer choice because there is no clear sense of an author in a television talent show, unlike C, which implies someone who is doing the targeting.
Another main idea question: this time, one that relies on understanding what happens when someone is not part of a fictional audience. I know this because the reference to those who would laugh at a Hemingway short story immediately follows the mention of the game, and because the author follows this by stating that these laughing readers are “totally unable to adapt to its demands on them.” So I need an answer choice that talks about demands placed on the reader.I. Because they would have found the writing style quaint: I does not mention demands—“quaint” is a matter of taste, and the word “quaint” is actually a synonym for “old-fashioned,” which makes I nonsensical since Hemingway was writing after the seventeenth century. I has to be wrong.
II. Because the plots of short stories have changed radically since then: II only implies a demand if I really stretch my thinking for it. More problematically, while the passage mentions changes in writing, it does not mention changes in plots over time. II is therefore also wrong.
III. Because basic, essential details were missing: III, however, definitely does mention a demand placed on readers: to know basic, essential details. Therefore, I can confidently choose III by itself.
Definitely wrong, because the passage does not mention plots changing throughout history.
B is exactly what I’m looking for.
II is wrong, which is good enough to get rid of C.
And I know I is wrong because it’s a nonsensical answer.
This is a question that requires me to describe the passage abstractly. I know that this is a passage about literature, but a quick glance through the answer choices suggests that I will need to get more specific than that. I also know this is a passage about the relationship between authors and readers: about how writers need to imagine someone that they are writing to in order to write. If I’m not feeling certain about this prediction, then it also makes sense to eliminate answer choices that either only describe a part of the passage (the most common wrong answer type for this kind of question), or do not describe the passage at all.
A only describes a part of the passage; the shift to the discussion of Hemingway, who does not write in either century, confirms that large parts of the passage would not be valuable to such historians. A therefore has to be wrong.
This is a pretty good candidate for the right answer, even though it does not explicitly mention literature. The author posits that literature is something like a form of communication between writers and readers. But not mentioning literature does make me a little concerned, so I would feel better if I eliminated the other answer choices.
The history of the English language is only mentioned at the very end of the passage; most of the passage isn’t about it, so C has to be wrong.
This is a tempting wrong answer, since the passage discusses Hemingway a great deal. However, the passage is not focused on Hemingway; it rather uses Hemingway to make a larger point about writers writing to fictional audiences: about how writers communicate to their readers. D therefore has to be wrong, and B correct.
This question is checking to see if I understand the passage argument enough to be able to understand how its principles would apply to a very different kind of author: a mass media advertiser. I know that a fictional audience is meant to “play along” with the author, and has to be “trained” to do what the author wants. So I need to find an answer which suggests that intended readers are trained to do what the author wants. And since this is a mass media advertiser, I can assume that the author wants to sell products, so it would help if an answer choice said something about making the intended reader more open to buying things.
I have no good reason to choose A. Speaking nicely to someone may make them more amenable to whatever I am saying, but that’s true of anyone; it’s not specific enough to the needs of a mass media advertiser, which means I can eliminate A.
B has a similar problem. Mass media advertisers don’t have clear needs that a “cryptic message” would address.
C is closer because it’s at least talking about products, but I’m not sure how treating readers like scholars would help encourage them to buy things. Still, that’s close enough that I can maybe imagine C being the right answer; but since I’m not certain, I need to check if D is a better answer choice.
D is definitely better than C, since it’s much easier to see why intended readers would want to buy things if they were approached as D describes. D also fits the passage argument, since it represents a way of training an audience. I can confidently choose D over C and move on.
I know that the passage argues that the fictional audience is a problem for the writer, so I can imagine that the reason why audience identity is not a problem for oral storytellers is because they perform in front of their audiences, while authors do not.
This has to be wrong, because it feels far more likely that having audiences that change often would make the storyteller’s job harder, not easier.
The passage does not either suggest that oral storytellers only repeated the same tales, or that audiences would tire of hearing the same tales, so I can eliminate B confidently.
C is perfect, and fits what I’m looking for, since it suggests that oral storytellers lack the problem of having to write for an intended audience in the absence of an actual one.
I can’t see how D could be right. The passage doesn’t suggest anything about novelty superseding the need for information, so I can eliminate D and choose C.
To answer a question like this, I need to find the quote in the question stem and just determine if the author supports it: if anything either follows the quote or precedes it that helps make the quote more understandable or persuasive. The quote is given at the start of paragraph 2, as part of the reason why history is not boring, and is immediately followed by an analogy: “Human history is a bit like biological evolution.” Since the two sentences implicitly share the same focus—to talk about history—I can therefore deduce that the author explains the statement above with this discussion of biological evolution.
This is almost exactly what I’m looking for, since it mentions “biological evolution.” However, “comparing it with” is a pretty ambiguous statement, so I may not feel great about A, especially as the first question in this set. So to increase my confidence in this passage and question, it makes sense to eliminate the wrong answer choices.
B is definitely wrong, since “mass extinctions” are not mentioned until the end of paragraph 2, where they are brought up as evidence for why “The fabric of life is so fascinating.” Proximity matters for a question like this; the further one statement is from another, the less likely the two statements have anything to do with each other.
C is an example of the problem of proximity. It is mentioned, but paragraphs away from the quote, so I can safely eliminate it.
D is easy to eliminate because the idea is explained further. That means that A has to be right.
This quote is from paragraph 2, where the author argues that the above are, and help bring about, “true novelty.” So I need to find an answer choice that talks about something new emerging.
There is nothing new about A. It is a change, but not a change into something without precedent.
B is a really good prospect for the right answer. The sentence before the quote mentions that “There are undeniable trends in history, one of the most obvious being the increase in our scientific understanding and the technological complexities of our world.” Since there is no contrast word in the next sentence, I can assume that the two sentences are linked: that “technological complexity” counts as “unprecedented.” B also makes sense more conceptually: those technological innovations produced plenty of things that did not exist before the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. B is good enough to choose and move on from.
There is nothing marked as new about C. In fact, to say that these civil wars have “historically wracked” these countries is to suggest that they are not new.
D also does not clearly suggest that these shows are new. B has to be right.
The easiest way to answer a question that is asking for a statement that the author would agree with is to search for some value judgment the author makes. The third paragraph starts off the author’s central metaphor about a magnetic world, but the world it describes is one in which “life would be one long, monotonous nothingness. The history of your world would have fixed laws and unending peace and uniformity stretching back through time: history would be truly boring.” Since “boring” is typically a bad thing, that’s a value judgment; I need an answer choice which says something similar. The other way to predict an answer choice for a question like this is to look for a really provocative and strong statement made by the author, something like the end of paragraph 3: “Indeed, there would be no history at all, since a record of unbroken sameness is not history, but the lack of it.” So another eligible answer choice would be one that mentions how history only exists when it is not “unbroken sameness.”
I don’t see anything that mentions change having to be “accompanied by knowledge,” and A does not resemble any of my predictions, so it’s easy to eliminate.
B resembles my second prediction. However, since I came up with two, I might want to eliminate my way through the other choices just to make sure the other prediction does not come up: thus forcing me to better understand this question.
That definitely doesn’t resemble either of my predictions, so I can eliminate C.
Same with D; “deeper meaning” is not addressed in paragraph 3, and a random world only comes up in paragraph 4, so there is no reason why D would be correct.
The author’s magnetic world is mentioned in three paragraphs, but I only need the introduction to the world in order to answer this question: “Imagine that you lived in a magnetic world” (paragraph 3). If I live in a magnetic world, I am likely a magnet. This gets confirmed later on in paragraph 3; if “All the magnets would be pointing in the same direction and would rarely if ever depart from it,” and “All your friends would be doing the same thing,” then I am likely going to be the same as my friends in this world.
Nothing about being a magnet here.
B is a nice trick answer choice because it mentions magnets, but not in the way that I need.
Same problem.
And since D mentions magnets, D is correct.
The quote is from the last paragraph, which is describing a change meant to affect many that is initiated by some people (“mass movements initiated by one or a few magnets”) that is “unexpected.” This is an analogy question, so I need to find a choice that also describes something that is unexpectedly generated by people.
This is a pretty great answer choice, because it starts with a few people (“One’s country’s revolution”) and spreads around the world in a way that is not predictable or expected. There is no logical reason why a revolution in one country would cause revolutions to occur in other countries. But this is a challenging question, so I am still better off eliminating the wrong answer choices in order to feel confident about choosing A.
This also describes a global change, which means I need to now compare B to A. In this comparison, B comes off as clearly wrong. A disease is not something that is naturally “initiated by one or a few” people, and that’s good enough to make A better than B.
I also don’t normally equate “technological advances” with “mass movements.” Even if that were the case, I’m not sure that I could call C “unexpected” in any obvious way, so C is worse than A.
I can’t see any immediate way that being “commended” resembles anything from the magnet example, so I feel good about eliminating D.
A quick look back at the Butterfield quotation in paragraph 1 gives me something to work with: “There is something in the nature of historical events […] which twists the course of history in a direction that no man ever intended.” Since I know that Butterfield is brought up as part of the discussion of what makes history interesting, I can deduce that his quote is meant to suggest that history is interesting when it follows an unintended course.
There’s nothing about historical transformation in the quote, so A is wrong.
B has a similar problem. Global upheavals may not be intentional, but not all changes in history’s direction are major global upheavals. On that basis, I can eliminate B.
Another reason to drop B is because C fits what I’m looking for so well, since “unexpected and significant events” are really similar to “twists in the course of history.”
Butterfield does not mention “talented people,” so D is wrong.
There are two ways to approach a question like this: either base it on what the author states the author likes, or (more commonly), deduce what the author would like based off of what the author states they do not like. The author’s extended metaphor about a magnetic world provides two paradigms that the author rejects: a world with too much order, in which the “temperature was held below the critical point, the temperature at which magnetic power is disrupted,” and a world with too much chaos, in which “the temperature were to be raised well above the critical temperature.” This helps frame the last paragraph: “how much more interesting things would be if the temperature were brought close to the critical temperature.” This implies that this world that the author favors would likely be a mix of order and chaos.
A fits my prediction, and so I can choose it confidently and move on.
B does not match my prediction, and does not really make sense as an explanation for the author’s ideal world, so I can eliminate it.
The author favors some order and some disorder, but never says anything about rendering order into some illusion. So C is also wrong.
This is tempting because it is so vague, but that is actually what helps to make D wrong. It is far less specific than A is, and requires an extra step of reasoning that the passage does not provide: that a world that contains both randomness and predictability is a world of unprecedented complexity.”
This is a great first question, because it’s asking me about the main argument of the passage. The paragraph begins by talking about one approach to research that took place before the 1920s, then paragraph 3 states what changed: “social scientists in the 1920s began to build a second form of research involving expenditure surveys that aimed not to delineate living standards among low-income families but to understand consumer behavior and its effects on the national economy.” So I am just looking for a choice that mentions a shift towards focusing on consumer behavior.
Nope.
Nope.
There it is. I can choose C and move on.
And nope. In fact, the passage states that D is what research objectives changed from.
A nice, straightforward main idea question. I know that the passage focuses on arguing and describing a shift in how economic research approached their study of consumers, so I just need to find an answer that resembles this.
A is meant to be attractive because it starts the passage, but there is no clear way that later paragraphs can be seen as arguing A. The passage moves on from A, so there is no way that A could be a central focus of the passage.
B is what I’m looking for, so I can choose it and move on.
This is really similar to A, and runs into a similar problem: that there is no clear way to view the later paragraphs as arguing C, since later parts of the passage change their arguments.
D is mentioned in the passage, but the passage also argues that research developed past D in the latter half of the passage. D therefore does not encompass enough of the passage to be correct.
This question asks me to evaluate the effect of new information on the passage argument. I know that paragraph 1 states that 1920s labor activists argued that new wages would encourage people to buy more products: “As the 1920s progressed, union leaders and their liberal allies emphasized a different justification: rising industrial productivity would require increasing working-class ‘purchasing power’ to provide an expanded market for the abundance of goods now rolling out of factories.” The new information in the question stem directly challenges this point, since people with increased wages “generally save their money rather than spend it on new products.” So I know that I’m looking for an answer choice which states that the finding weakens the argument.
A does not capture the way that the information in the question stem affects the passage arguments, since it makes no mention of the effect of new wages on purchasing tendencies. A therefore has to be wrong.
B is wrong for similar reasons: because it does not account for the effect that the new information would have on passage information.
This is correct, because it is in line with the way the new info in the question stem would affect the passage.
D might be attractive on first glance because it also mentioned that the argument would be weakened, but productivity is not mentioned in relation to those 1920s era labor activists, so D has to be wrong.
Many parts of the passage are supported by evidence, so the most efficient way to approach this question is just to eliminate the wrong answers: those that are not supported by evidence at all.
This is mentioned in paragraph 1, but it is just stated: “Thus prior to World War I, consumption-based calls for higher wages relied heavily on ethical claims as labor activists implicitly or explicitly defined an appropriate “standard of living” and demanded wages sufficient to reach that level.” No evidence is given to support this claim; no one is quoted, no statistics given, no facts are provided to help convince a reader of this claim. So A is wrong.
This is stated in paragraph 3, but no examples or support is given for it. The author could have mentioned some economists to better prove the point, but the point is instead just given without evidence.
This is actually almost identical to A; it is similarly given without any explanation.
This has to be right, and so it is. Paragraph 2 supports D by explaining those surveys, while paragraph 3 goes into detail on the shift itself. Since D is explained, it has to be correct.
There is usually no real way to predict the right answer to this question type, since any number of methods may not be mentioned in the passage. That makes elimination my best strategy.
I don’t recognize A from the passage, which makes it a good candidate to be the right answer. But it’s always possible that I may have missed it in my read-through, so I’m still best off eliminating the other answer choices to confirm that A is correct.
This is mentioned in the very first sentence, which states that “those seeking to redress economic inequities have also found it valuable for building and strengthening unions.” So B has to be wrong.
This is also mentioned in the first sentence: “regulating production and retail practices.” That makes C wrong.
Same thing. The first sentence ends with “championing redistributive economic policies.” D is wrong, and A has to be right.
The first long paragraph makes this argument clearly enough that I should have noted it during my first reading of the passage: “As the 1920s progressed, union leaders and their liberal allies emphasized a different justification: rising industrial productivity would require increasing working-class ‘purchasing power’ to provide an expanded market for the abundance of goods now rolling out of factories.” So I’m looking for an answer which says something like “workers needed higher wages in order to buy all the products that factories were producing.”
That is definitely not mentioned with regards to the quote from paragraph 1.
This, however, does align with that quote. Workers needed higher wages to afford, or be able to pay, for all the products that were being produced. B is good enough to choose and move on.
This is the argument that paragraph 1 states precedes the late 1920s. Since the first paragraph states that labor activists moved on from this argument, C has to be wrong.
This is a little too close to C to be correct, or even A. In either case, since two answers cannot be right, they must both be wrong.
This question type requires me to account for something that the argument in the paragraph states did not happen, or to infer some lack based off of what happened after the 1920s. Paragraph 2 states that before the 1920s, “most surveys had aimed ‘to secure accurate information as to the standards of living of the group studied.’” That only tells us what happened before the 1920s, so to find out what did not happen, I need to figure out the limitations of this study: how it was innovated on after the 1920s. The end of paragraph 2 implies this: “Differences in methodology and goals abounded, but all the studies were limited to specific regions and focused on social groups near the bottom of an industrial economy: the working class, family farmers, the poor, or immigrants.” Since all studies before the 1920s shared these limitations, I can infer that before the 1920s, there were no broad studies of other social and economic groups.
This answer choice is testing to make sure that I read the question correctly, since paragraph 2 directly states that A was done before the 1920s. I would only choose A if I did not pay enough attention to the “NO” at the end of the question stem.
I can eliminate B because paragraph 2 does not clearly suggest that the reason why different social groups were not studied is because there was no ready methodology available. The passage simply suggests that these studies were not done. Without more specific information, B has to be wrong.
This information is not clearly referenced in the parts of paragraph 2 that made sense to study so I can eliminate C.
This is perfect. If, before 1920, “all the studies were limited to specific regions,” then there were no nationwide studies, period. D has to be right. D further amplifies its correctness by mentioning that all the studies “focused on social groups near the bottom of an industrial economy”; in other words, these studies definitely did not study “all the social groups in an industrial economy.”