This is a novel main idea question: part weakener, and part strengthener. For a question to “determine the validity” of something, that means that the answer to the question given by the correct answer choice will either help to make the main idea more likely or less likely. Since this is a multifaceted argument, it is difficult to predict what the right answer may look like, so the best strategy is to keep the main idea in mind—that we do not have a biological predilection for war—and test each answer choice to determine if the question will affect the main argument.
A is a clear wrong answer, because who chose how many years the study would involve has nothing to do with the actual findings of the study. That means that knowing the answer to A wouldn’t help me to figure out if the Embers’ study is valid or not.
This choice at least mentions many of the ideas involved in the passage, but it is not clear what knowing about similarities between child-rearing practices in warlike and non-warlike societies would do to the passage. If there are not many similarities between the societies, it is still as possible that war could have a biological component as it is that war could not. The same goes for if there are many similarities between those societies. That means that B has to be incorrect, since answering B wouldn’t help me to test the validity of the Embers’ study.
C has to be wrong because it is not clear how selecting some tribes over others would affect the passage argument. Since the passage itself does not mention any specific tribes, the passage does not depend on specific tribes being asked over others.
D has to be the right answer, and it luckily is. If the answer to this question is “yes,” then that strengthens the author’s argument about how “societies that engage in the most warfare express considerably more fear of food shortages” (paragraph 5). If the answer is “no,” then it weakens the argument by suggesting that a piece of evidence in favor of the main argument may not apply.
To answer this question, I need to be ready to rephrase the author’s main idea in a more general form. I know the author argues that war is not encouraged by human biology, but is instead encouraged by external factors; the right answer should resemble this in some way.
A is the exact opposite of what I’m looking for, so I can safely eliminate it.
B is a great answer because it fits my prediction about war being caused by external factors (such as the need for food or other resources). This also definitely resembles the main idea, as given in the last three paragraphs of the passage. That makes B correct.
The author specifically disregards this point in paragraph 6, when the author argues that war causes aggression. C makes the logical error of reversing cause and effect in the passage, so it has to be wrong.
The passage mentions that the study focuses on nonindustrial societies, but the passage does not actually state that it is trying to understand warfare in industrial societies. That makes D wrong.
To answer this question, I need to make sure I understand the three categories of war, and figure out which one resembles the main idea the most.I. “Ultimate” causes – I know that the passage argues that people fight because of external needs like resource scarcity, and one of the causes—the “ultimate” cause—specifically mentions “competition within a society for scarce resources” (paragraph 2). So I is a correct option.
II. “Proximate” causes – “Proximate” causes do not clearly fit, since the passage does not really talk about the role military leaders have in making a society more or less warlike. So II has to be wrong.
III. Consequences of previous conflicts – I’m undecided on III. This is actually listed as perhaps suggestive of decreasing wars in paragraph 6: “When those societies lose wars and come under the control of outside forces, harsh child-rearing methods diminish sharply, they found.” One might infer that winning a war therefore might encourage harsh child-rearing methods, but that does not correspond closely enough with the definition of this kind of conflict in paragraph 2 for me to choose it. Given my uncertainty, I should go into the answer choices and only worry about III if a choice lists both I and III alone.
This has to be the right answer. The only way this may have been wrong is if III was also listed, but since I and III is not an option, A has to be right.
II is clearly an incorrect option, which makes B wrong.
II makes C wrong too.
It also makes D wrong.
Ferguson is mentioned in the last paragraph, and is quoted to support the author’s main idea about the Ember study. Ferguson is quoted as saying “War is not the natural human condition […] We need to dispense with the idea that people love violence and are doomed to fight.” The right answer will describe a group of people who likely believe the same.
A is not one such group. A does not clearly suggest that “War is not the natural human condition.” If anything, it might suggest the opposite: that warfare may be related to interpersonal conflict. A therefore cannot be correct.
B has to be the right answer because it echoes a claim made by Ferguson: “Often, leaders must paint the enemy as inhuman in order to motivate people to kill” (paragraph 7). Since warfare encourages parents to make their children aggressive, B also argues against the idea that humans are innately warlike (since if we were, we would not need war to cause parents to teach us to be aggressive).
C is the opposite of what I’m looking for, so it has to be wrong.
D is incorrect because Ferguson supports the Embers’ findings.
This is another broad question that will require me to keep the main idea in mind, and to look for a generalization that rephrases or builds on the passage argument.
A is a perfect answer choice, since the Ember study finds that “War is not inevitable” and is usually motivated by other factors. I would choose A and move on.
The passage does not ever discuss anything like a single world government, so B can’t be right.
C is what the Ember study argues against, so it cannot be an inference that is justifiably drawn from the passage.
D is such a strong claim that I am immediately suspicious of it. Though the author makes an argument about the causes of war, the author is not clearly as definitive as D in terms of saying that there are no other causes for war than what is mentioned in the passage. D goes too far, and so has to be wrong.
To answer this question, I just need to compare the situation in the question stem to the factors that go into warfare mentioned in the passage. This is the most prominent part of the passage, and so it is easy to find in paragraph 2. The question stem very strongly echoes the first cause: “ultimate causes of war that influence the goals people fight for, such as competition within a society for scarce resources, and intense divisions between groups of related individuals.” “Internal factions” resembles “competition within a society,” so I just need to find an answer choice which mentions that first option.
This is incorrect because the situation in the question stem does not clearly involve natural disasters.
This is the third option, but nothing in the situation described in the question stem mentions factors that involve “further conflict.”
C is incorrect because the situation in the question stem does not involve leaders or military preparedness.
D is what I’m looking for, and so I can pick it confidently.
To answer this question, I need to figure out what effect, if any, the information in the passage has on the statement in the question stem. If people are afraid of the unknown, then that means that people do not fight because they are biological predisposed to do so. The fear of the unknown is very similar to fears over food scarcity and other similar external pressures, so I can predict that the right answer will suggest that the information in the passage does indeed support the claim made in the question stem.
This looks correct, and gets the Ember study right, so I really like this as a right answer. However, a quick glance at B tells me that it is also a “yes” answer choice, so I should check that answer too just to be safe.
B is clearly wrong because it gets the Ember study wrong, since the study finds the opposite of B: that humans do not have an innate tendency toward aggression that encourages warfare. A has to be right.
This is wrong because the passage supports the information in the question stem.
D is wrong for the same reason: it should begin with “yes,” not “no.”
This is a fairly rare question type that requires me to decide which answer choice is susceptible to empirical judgment: to judgment that is based on the senses. So, for example, I can empirically verify if I have $10 in my wallet because I can use my sense of sight to confirm whether or not that is true by looking in my wallet. However, I cannot empirically verify that my sister is anxious about her son, because it is difficult to definitively confirm or deny anxiety with the senses. It is entirely possible that my sister might be exhibiting symptoms of anxiety, but not actually be anxious. I cannot even necessarily trust that she is anxious if she tells me that she is, because she might be lying, or mistaken. Given how challenging this question type is, it is usually a good idea to eliminate the wrong answer choices: to get rid of choices that do not include empirically verifiable claims.
This is incorrect because feelings are not necessarily empirically verifiable. A child may feel powerless without exhibiting any symptoms of feeling powerless, and a child could be pretending to be powerless when they are not.
B is incorrect because motivations are really difficult to empirically verify. People do things for reasons that are not usually detectable by the senses.
C is wrong because it is hard to tell if a professor has or lacks wisdom. I may be able to empirically verify that a professor has done something stupid or wise, but how many stupid or wise acts will it take for me to know how wise a professor is?
D has to be right, and it is. I can empirically verify D by watching these debates and seeing how much scholarly material makes it into these debates. Since this is something that is countable and detectable by the senses, D is correct.
To answer this question, I need to determine what claim is essential to the argument. The easiest way to figure this out is to test each answer choice by negating them. A negative formulation of a wrong answer will have no effect on the argument (or a positive effect), while a negative formulation of an assumption will break the argument: will make it no longer make sense.
This has to be right because the passage argument is essentially that we should not worry about televised violence because “television violence is a relatively minor happenstance. Its appearance suggests an improvement in the human condition, not a deterioration: a harmless way of sublimating, or distancing, those normal feelings of powerlessness or anger or frustration or aggression that well-adjusted human beings vent in a civilized society through vicarious means” (paragraph 5). If I negate A and say that “fantasy violence is not an essentially healthy experience,” then that makes it possible to see television violence as unhealthy. Since that would make the passage argument make less sense, A has to be the right answer.
If I negate B and say that “The taste for television violence does not reflect audience inadequacy,” it is not clear what effect the negated version of B could have on the passage argument. Fantasy violence might still be healthy for people even if B is not true; there may be other healthy reasons for humans to indulge in simulated violence. Since the passage argument does not clearly hinge on B, B is incorrect.
If I negate C and say that “The majority of people are not dishonest about violence,” that statement has no clear effect on the argument. How people feel about violence does not say anything about the effects of televised violence on people.
Even if “Professors do not abuse their positions as teachers,” the passage argument would go unaffected. The professors are just part of a secondary point that does not affect the passage very much at all.
To answer this question, I need to determine what the passage has to say about television violence and public policy. I know that the passage begins by talking about the criticism of television violence in the United States, so perhaps the question is referring to the political discussions over television violence. That is indeed where the passage argument shifts; paragraph 3 mentions that “it is in the halls of Congress that the attack” on what the author seems to suggest is largely benign television violence is staged. In particular, the author seems to think that these politicians don’t really care about television violence per se: “this controversy is well covered by the press, bringing the senator’s or representative’s name and image into households throughout the country. Their fame is linked to an immaculate concern—the purification of American family life. The senator or representative is depicting himself or herself as a savior, purer than pure.” So the right answer will likely have something to do with these politicians using the debate over television violence for their own ends.
While it is clear that the television debate is divisive, the author does not seem to accuse people of bias: of letting their devotion to a position distort the discourse. The author is instead claiming that there is something more manipulative going on with the arguments over television violence than just bias, so A has to be wrong.
B is a pretty good candidate for the right answer, since the politicians in paragraph 3 are described as having ulterior motives: that is, wanting to be seen a certain way, and to be famous. Still, this is a tough question, and I would feel better if I eliminated the other answer choices.
This is the author’s stance, and it is not one that the author claims is raised in public policy debates, so C is wrong.
This is perhaps the most tempting answer choice, since the author clearly disagrees with how the television violence debate has been handled. However, the author’s argument that there is some value to televised violence suggests that the author wants public policy around it to shift: not for public policy to avoid dealing with television violence at all. This is reinforced in the last paragraph: “What can be asked for here is that public and the scholarly community apply a high level of intellect to the issue of television violence. Both the historical and the scientific evidence need to be sorted through very carefully. We need to ask new questions and do new studies probing such questions as why some societies heavily dependent on American television programming have much lower rates of violent crime.” That’s enough to make D wrong, and B correct.
Though long, this is a mostly straightforward weakener, mainly because the author argues for the benefits of fantasy violence in paragraph 5. I call this a “mostly” straightforward weakener because, while I can go into this looking to weaken this argument, I can also be sure that the wrong answers will definitely strengthen the author’s argument in paragraph 5. For most weakeners, the wrong answer will either be a strengthener, or will be out of the scope of the passage.
This is a pretty great candidate for the right answer because it directly attacks the supposed benefits of fantasy violence. Paragraph 5 states that such violence is “a harmless way of sublimating, or distancing, those normal feelings of powerlessness or anger or frustration or aggression that well-adjusted human beings vent in a civilized society through vicarious means.” In other words, television violence should help people to regulate their emotions and deal with their everyday frustrations. If this is the case, then those who watch television violence should behave differently than those who do not watch such violence, since those people lack an extra coping mechanism for life’s troubles. But if children who watch a lot of television violence are no different than those who do not, then that suggests that there might not be benefits to watching television violence: hence weakening the argument.
B is wrong because it reinforces the idea that there are some benefits to watching television violence. Since B is a strengthener, it has to be wrong.
C also strengthens the passage by suggesting there are benefits to watching television violence.
Same with D. These are all choices which ultimately say that watching television violence is good for you.
To answer this question, I need to know the passage argument about fantasy violence, and look for an abstracted version of that argument in the answer choices. I know that the passage argues that same claim I relied on in the previous paragraph: that television violence benefits viewers by giving them “a harmless way of sublimating, or distancing, those normal feelings of powerlessness or anger or frustration or aggression that well-adjusted human beings vent in a civilized society through vicarious means” (paragraph 5). So I just need to be on the lookout for a more general way of saying that. The difficult vocabulary used at the beginning of each of the answer choices can be intimidating, but what follows the colon in each case is meant to explain that term, so I can actually focus almost exclusively on that part of each answer choice.
This feels close to what I’m looking for, but it’s not quite right. First off, I don’t recall anything about television violence as affirming social values. The author only argues that there is social value in televised violence: not the violence is, for example, exacted against people that the society hates. I’m uneasy enough about A that I’d leave it alone, but be on the lookout for a better answer choice.
This is the exact opposite of the quote I’m relying on. The author’s argument rests on the idea that fantasy violence is distanced from real-world violence: is a way, in other words, to keep the violence “vicarious,” to keep people from being violent in the real world by having them get their violent feelings out through watching violence on television. B therefore has to be incorrect.
This fits what I’m looking for. First off, the test rewards me here for knowing my vocabulary: “catharsis” is a synonym for “sublimation,” which is what the author calls what televised violence does. Secondly, the idea that televised violence “dissipates” our natural aggression through “vicarious” fantasies really echoes paragraph 5, right down to using the same word, “vicarious.” I can therefore choose C and move on.
D is wrong for the same reason B is wrong: because the author argues against this notion. This is what those who argue against televised violence claim: that such imagery trains people to be more violent, and not that it helps people to regulate their emotions.
To answer this question, I need to understand the function of the part of the passage cited in the question stem, so I can know how it supports some other part of the passage. The discussion of corner columns in paragraph 4 only help so much: if all columns “were equal in diameter, those on the ends would appear thinner. The architect has consequently corrected this optical distortion by increasing the diameter of the corner columns and by spacing them more closely at the ends, thus promoting the appearance of stability at these important points.” My immediate question is: why does the author want me to know this? What is this point supporting? A good place to go is to the point of the paragraph: “Far from maintaining a rigid mathematical regularity, the columns show a great number of subtle variations from the norm.” It makes sense that the discussion of the corner columns supports this, since that discussion is all about some variations, so that is one possible right answer to the question. But if this is a more difficult version of this question type, then I should also look for other parts of the passage that the cited claim supports in a less direct manner. Scanning through the passage, the only one that stands out is towards the end of the passage: “The appearance of a balance between vertical and horizontal elements is certainly the impression the architects strove to create.” After all, the modification to the corner columns is made in order to make the corner columns look like the middle ones.
This is mentioned in the first paragraph, but nothing else about the post-and-lintel system is discussed in the rest of the passage. Since I have no idea how that system relates to the columns, I can eliminate A.
This is a good candidate to be the right answer because it resembles my second prediction. Unfortunately, it’s not a perfect match—that part of the passage only mentioned balance “between vertical and horizontal elements”—so I’m going to hold onto B and see if I can eliminate C and D.
The cited part of the passage actually seems to speak against C, since the simple thing to do when designing the Parthenon would have been to just keep all the columns equal in diameter. That means that C cannot be right.
D is effectively the same claim as A; they both refer to the same paragraph, and are making a similar point. And like A, I can’t see how D could be right. The reference in paragraph 4 does not say anything about an idealized house, and while the discussion of the idealized house does involve columns, it does not involve anything like the modification to the corner columns that the question stem asks about. That makes D wrong, and confirms that B is right.
This is such a specific weakener that I can only answer it by referring to the passage. Those grooves are mentioned in paragraph 3: “The purpose of this fluting was twofold, the first being to correct an optical illusion. When seen in the direct sunlight, a series of ungrooved round columns appears flat. The fluting provides shadows in all lighting so that the round appearance is maintained. The second purpose was an aesthetic one, that of providing a number of graceful curves pleasing to the eye.” So the information in the question stem directly challenges the first purpose of these grooves: to “correct an optical illusion.”
That’s not what I’m looking for, and A actually describes what grooves are; I have no idea what effect the claim in the passage about ungrooved columns would have on that definition.
B, however, is exactly what I’m looking for. I can choose it and move on.
This is the second reason for the grooves, and the one that the new information in the question stem does not address. So I can eliminate C.
D is actually the same answer as C—since to be “graceful” is to be “aesthetically pleasing—so I can eliminate them both: because C is wrong, and because C and D cannot both be right.
Very factual passages like this one can be difficult to read because they tend to have few arguments, but one of the benefits of these kinds of passages is that test-makers are also constrained with regards to what they can ask questions about. This part of the passage has already been asked about, so I at least know where to look to answer this question, and at most already know the answer to this question. Going back to paragraph 4, I know that the corner columns appear to be the same diameter as the middle ones because the architect increased “the diameter of the corner columns” and spaced them “more closely at the ends.” But the reason why those corner columns appear thinner is because of the prior sentence: “the corner columns seem dark when viewed against the sky, while those between seem light when seen against the dark cella.” That must be my answer.
A is easy to eliminate, because it does not mention anything from either quotes from paragraph 4.
B would explain why the corner columns would appear to be of similar diameter, not why they would appear thinner. It has to be wrong.
The passage doesn’t mention anything like this, and I am immediately on guard against C because the mention of lighter material seems like a distortion of the light and dark problem that is the actual right answer. I can therefore eliminate C.
D is what I am looking for. Since the corner columns are dark relative to the sky, they look thinner: a problem that expanding the columns and placing them closer to their neighbors corrects for. D is correct.
Because the new information in the question stem is just a confirmation of something stated in the passage, this question actually resembles Q13; both questions ask about the effect of one piece of passage information on another. I know that the claim above is mentioned in the last paragraph: “The appearance of a balance between vertical and horizontal elements is certainly the impression the architects strove to create. However, on careful analysis there is not a straight line to be found anywhere in the entire design. It is psychologically rather than mathematically correct.” The very last sentence is constructed in such a way that it implicitly builds on this information: “The construction is thus carried out on a subjective basis in order, paradoxically, to achieve the ideal of objectivity.” So the right answer should say something like the new information supports the idea that the Parthenon was constructed on a subjective basis to make the building feel objectively constructed.
This is incorrect because the confirmation in the question stem is stated as doing the opposite. It instead helps prove that the Parthenon is “psychologically rather than mathematically correct.”
This goes against everything in the passage, so why would confirming a part of the passage argument support B? B has to be wrong.
I know that the Parthenon’s curves are aesthetically pleasing, but that is not listed as a reason in the last paragraph. The passage shifts from talking about what is beautiful in paragraph 4 to the idea of how the Parthenon is subjectively and objectively constructed. C therefore has to be wrong.
That leaves D, so D has to be right. D is because it just barely tweaks the last sentence of the passage. “The construction is thus carried out on a subjective basis” because there are no straight lines, and yet the space feels balanced between vertical and horizontal elements.
This is a challenging question because it refers to a very short paragraph: one so short that it almost certainly does not contain the explanation I need to answer the question. In other words, I will need to infer an answer. Looking at the quote—“The columns rested directly on this top step without any other base and seemed to spring directly from it”—what stands out is 1) the notion that these columns “rested directly on this top step,” as if there is something significant about the proximity of the columns to the step, and 2) that the columns “seemed to spring directly from it,” that is, that the columns appeared to spring from the base, but did not actually. That really echoes the main idea of the passage: that the Parthenon is constructed in such a way to give the appearance of something objectively perfect and whole, when it is actually not so mathematically perfect. So I’m looking for an answer choice that mentions the way the Parthenon was engineered, and how it appears.
A is a good start, since it resembles my prediction and specifically mentions the “appearance of seamless construction.” However, this is the first answer choice, and I will feel better about choosing it if I eliminate the other choices first.
There is nothing about mathematical regularity in paragraph 2, so I can eliminate B.
Entasis is mentioned in paragraph 4, but it is done so in reference to the columns: not the stylobate, which is the platform on which the columns rest. That makes C wrong.
This is mentioned in paragraph 3, but it has the same issues as C does. The fluting has to do with the columns, and not the platform on which those columns rest. D is therefore wrong.
This is a nice straightforward main point question to start the passage. The passage starts with Yeats and his dismissal of war poetry, and then goes on to defend that poetry by accounting for why Yeats could not stomach war poetry: “In the present day, the poets he so peevishly and grandly dismissed from his collection are considered to be among the greatest of modern poets […] Yeats, however, simply could not accept what the poets of the Great War had to offer; his generation was quite unprepared. War had been a subject for poetry, but never like this” (paragraph 2). So I’m looking for a choice which either claims that Yeats was wrong, or else why Yeats was wrong.
A is wrong because it describes the perspective the author argues against. This is Yeats’s claim, not the passage’s.
This is incorrect because the author is very specifically taking on Yeats’ claim about the value of the poetry of the Great War. B is just a point used to help make that claim.
Perfect. C is exactly what I’m looking for.
This is a tempting wrong answer choice because it draws on the last part of the passage, and so the part of the passage that is freshest in the minds of test-takers. However, D cannot be correct because the main point of a passage is the point that the passage is focused on arguing. No other paragraph in the passage argues D except for the last one; that makes D an ancillary point, not the main idea.
I know that Yeats disliked the war poets. I also know that Yeats sought to choose good poetry for his anthology of verse from 1892-1935. That should be more than enough information to get a right answer.
A seems so right that it makes me suspicious. Of course Yeats had to believe that much (a vague term) outstanding poetry was produced between 1892 and 1935. Otherwise, how would he have chosen poetry for his anthology? But again, this is so perfect that I will feel better about A if I can eliminate the other choices.
I don’t know enough about Yeats to possibly know that he disliked so much of pre-1914 poetry, but I do know enough about him to deduce that he must have liked at least some pre-1914 poetry (for his anthology). That makes B wrong.
Yeats would very much disagree with C, since Yeats is anti-war-poet, so that’s wrong.
This is a point the author makes, but Yeats does not talk about either poet, so I can’t choose D. A has to be right.
This is asking me to evaluate Yeats’ opinions about war poetry, and how they align with contemporary opinions. I just need to go back to paragraph 2 for that: “In the present day, the poets he so peevishly and grandly dismissed from his collection are considered to be among the greatest of modern poets.” Given that, the critic who agreed with Yeats would likely be seen as out of touch, and wrong.
A is the opposite of what I’m looking for.
There’s no good reason to pick B, since the passage doesn’t say anything about Yeats or the critic influencing how people look at the poetry of later wars.
This is a choice that is only attractive by virtue of mentioning another Oxford anthology. There is no reason to believe that just agreeing with Yeats would make a critic so influential.
D is the last choice standing, and it is right. If “in the present day” the poets Yeats hated “are considered to be among the greatest of modern poets,” then people who study poetry today are likely going to think that the critic mentioned above is as wrong as Yeats was about those war poets.
Given that the author’s strong negative opinion of Yeats is unmistakable by the time that Yeats is quoted again, the author cannot be quoting Yeats to support him. The other reason to quote someone you disagree with is to showcase how wrong that person is.
There is no way that A is right, since the quote is still about the war poets, and not Yeats’s poetry.
B is also wrong. The author does not give an inch to Yeats, and even the quote itself is phrased as a negation of Yeats’s introduction. The author wants us to “never” do what Yeats recommends.
C is wrong because it is rhetorically the same as B. Both imply that the author is sympathetic to Yeats, but the only sympathy the author describes is in paragraph 2: that Yeats was limited by his time. The quoted passage does not contain anything which references that limitation, so C is wrong.
This is a perfect answer choice. The author uses the quote at the end to recommend that we avoid doing what Yeats wants. It is the author’s last and most definitive jab at Yeats for his opinion on the Great War poets.
This question requires a simple passage check. Paragraph 4 directly tells me why these poets had trouble writing about their experiences: “On the face of it, the generation that faced the catastrophe of 1914 was ill-equipped poetically to express itself, having neither tradition to draw upon nor worthwhile models to imitate.” In other words, the poets had a hard time because they were doing something new, and lacked role models to help them handle their poetic subject.
This is a reasonable guess, but not one that is mentioned in the passage, so I can eliminate A.
This is a good candidate for the correct answer because it mentions how these poets lacked models. The idea that earlier poets did not write in a style appropriate to wartime subjects is there too, but it is also talked about in paragraph 2 and 3. I am confident enough in this answer choice that I can move on.
The passage actually implies the opposite, since paragraph 4 states that “At first, poets aped anthology pieces or relied on well-established forms, but gradually the really original poets found their own voices.” In other words, they first attempted to draw on poetic traditions, but found them unhelpful.
The passage doesn’t say anything about them being intimidated, and D does not resemble my prediction at all, so I feel good about eliminating it.
This is also another simple passage check, because Kipling and Hardy are mentioned as being unusual in paragraph 3: “Before 1914, when poets dealt with war it was to render it exotically or historically removed from immediate experience. War had all the conviction of modern television costume drama. There were two outstanding exceptions—Rudyard Kipling and Thomas Hardy.” The passage goes on to say that “Kipling made a serious attempt to reproduce the voice of the ordinary soldier and to get away from the bardic commentaries on the glories of the nation’s victories,” and that Hardy wrote “honestly” about the war. So the right answer should have something to say about how they were unusual because they wrote from the perspective of ordinary soldiers encountering warfare.
This is what Kipling is described as moving away from, so A has to be incorrect.
This also sounds a lot like “bardic commentaries on the glories” of war, so B is also out.
C is wrong for the same reason B is wrong: because these two poets were moving away from such a depiction of war.
This is the last answer choice, and is the right one. It makes sense that ordinary soldiers would see the “squalor and futility of war,” and that getting away from the “glories of the nation’s victories” might mean talking about warfare’s ugly side.
One more passage check, this time of the first sentence of the last paragraph: “In the version of literary history academically accepted until very recently, there was a long lull during which little of value was created in English poetry. We can now see this for the pernicious nonsense that it is, in the just recognition of Graves, Sassoon, and Owen, and the numerous—possibly lesser—poets who tried to portray the indescribable and express the unthinkable during the years 1914-1918.” The telling part of that quote is the mention of a “just recognition”: as if there was an injustice done until people saw the value in these poets. That is hopefully enough to find an answer, since there is no direct discussion of some major event that changed people’s minds.
A fits, though it’s a bit of an unexpected fit. It does say that people saw the poets differently, but it’s so on the nose that I would feel better by eliminating the other answer choices.
Modernism isn’t mentioned in the last paragraph, so B is wrong.
Yeats’s anthology is quoted in the last paragraph, but the anthology itself plays no part in the author’s arguments about why literary historians changed their minds. I can safely eliminate C.
Kipling and Hardy are only used in a localized argument in paragraph 3 that doesn’t really have anything to do with people changing their minds about the Great War poets. I can safely eliminate D as well.
An early main idea question is a good opportunity for me to confirm that I fully understand the passage. The passage is essentially a list of factors; the last 5 paragraphs number those factors. That means that the first paragraph tells me what they are factors of: what they are helping to explain. Looking at the first paragraph, each factor seems to be an attempt to explain why “while employees in large organizations have higher earnings, more fringe benefits, and more opportunities for promotion, they have less autonomy than do workers employed by small organizations.” That has to be the right answer.
A is one way of saying what I quoted, since “job rewards” could definitely mean “earnings, fringe benefits, and opportunities for promotion.” And while A does not seem to involve the mention of autonomy, it actually does, since autonomy is implied in that quote to be a “job reward” for working in a smaller organization. Still, A is the first question of this set, and this is a main idea question, so it’s not a bad idea to use the wrong answers to help me get a better grasp of what the passage says and does not say.
Earnings are only one of the issues at stake in the passage; B is therefore wrong because it is not the passage’s “central” concern.
I can safely eliminate C because C describes a recommendation, while the passage author is pretty neutral in tone; the passage is just offering an explanation, not a course of action.
The only difference between A and D is “directly,” which makes A inherently more attractive than D. It is always easier to argue a weak claim—like some factors “might” be responsible for something—than it is to argue a strong claim, like something directly affects something else. The other reason why D has to be wrong is because organization size is only one factor that contributes to job rewards. There are other factors mentioned—structure, job characteristics, labor markets, etc.—that involve organization size, but are also distinct from them.
Passage arguments rarely contradict themselves (though authors often cite arguments to argue against), so such contradictions are easy to miss in an initial read of the passage. Going back to paragraph 5, the discussion of job characteristics is explained in this manner: “Highly skilled and well-qualified workers tend to be paid more than less skilled and less qualified workers. They may also be granted more autonomy. Jobs in large organizations are more likely to require high-level skills.” That reminds me of the first paragraph, since I just drew on that to answer a question: “while employees in large organizations have higher earnings, more fringe benefits, and more opportunities for promotion, they have less autonomy than do workers employed by small organizations.” That reference to autonomy seems to contradict paragraph 5; for paragraph 5 to align with this, it should say that large organizations need fewer high-skilled workers than small organizations. With this in mind, I know that the right answer has to mention autonomy, and the differences between large and small organizations.
This is mentioned in paragraph 4, as part of the third factor, and so is unrelated to the discussion of job characteristics.
This is mentioned in reference to labor markets, and so there is no clear sign of contradiction there.
C is a trick choice, because it is the exact opposite of what I am looking for. C is what paragraph 5 implies, and so there is no contradiction with paragraph 5 here.
D, however, is what I’m looking for, and is the correct answer because it resembles the claim made in paragraph 1.
This is a simple passage check question. The cited quote mentions that “insofar as monitoring costs are higher in large organizations and high wages accompany high-quality work, such organizations may pay higher wages than small organizations because larger ones are less able to accurately measure their employees’ performance.” It helps to work backwards here. Because large organizations have a hard time measuring employee performance, their employees get paid more than employees in small organizations. For that to make sense, the author must be implying that employees in large organizations are getting overpaid because they cannot be effectively monitored.
And A is exactly what I’m looking for. I can choose it and move on.
B would not make sense, because if B were true, then employees in large organizations would be getting paid less than employees at a small organization, where it is easier to monitor and therefore confirm the quality of employee performance. B has to be wrong.
There is no mention of independent consultants in the section of the passage mentioned in the question stem, so I can safely eliminate C.
The cited bit of the passage actually argues the opposite: that these large organizations are not willing to pay the fees needed to effectively monitor their employees, since these organizations are described as running into “difficulty with monitoring” (paragraph 5). That makes D wrong.
There is so much context given in this question stem that I do not need to immediately go back to paragraph 4 to start answering this question. However, I do need to be ready in case the right answer weakens some nuance in the argument. It also helps to know that there are at least two ways to weaken the argument that the question stem is asking about: by either suggesting that large organizations offer fewer opportunities for promotion, or that they somehow offer more autonomy than small organizations.
A doesn’t clearly affect either of the two parts of the argument cited in the question stem. It arguably strengthens that argument, since it suggests that large organizations are promoting their employees, instead of hiring outsiders for higher positions.
I can eliminate B right away because coordination is not a major topic in paragraph 4.
C is also easy to eliminate because it is a concern raised in paragraph 5, not 4.
That leaves D, which does not look like a weakener right on the face of it. However, since it is the last answer choice standing, I can afford to think on it more. What D weakens is the first argument: that large organizations offer more opportunities for promotion. Differentiation is implied in paragraph 4 to be vertical: that the differentiation in a large organization provides more rungs up the corporate ladder for employees to climb. If most differentiation is just horizontal, then there is not as much opportunity for promotion, since there are fewer jobs to be promoted to. D is therefore the right answer.
This is an analogy question: one that is asking me to apply the principle behind the main idea to another situation. Since the main idea is about how larger organizations have less autonomy than smaller organizations, perhaps I am looking for an answer choice that says something like large families have less autonomy than smaller families do. However, since this is a LEAST question, that only tells me what the wrong answers might look like. The right answer, then, is likely going to be something which the passage explicitly mentions decreases autonomy. Besides being in a large organization, the only other mention that comes up is in paragraph 4: “large organizations often have more formalized relations with their employees, and formal rules and procedures tend to decrease employee autonomy.” So the right answer may have something to do with formalizing rules.
Monitoring resembles the discussions in paragraph 5, which talk about how large organizations that have difficulty with monitoring “may also account for greater employee autonomy.” So A would likely improve autonomy; I can therefore eliminate it.
B is about formalizing rules, and so resembles the passage argument in paragraph 4. Even though this is a hard question, this is so clearly correct that I can choose it and move on.
Paragraph 5 mentions that workers that are paid more tend to also have greater autonomy, so C has to be wrong.
And D finally resembles the main idea: that employees in smaller organizations tend to have more autonomy. D is therefore clearly incorrect.
This is a very broad question stem, so it’s hard to predict what the right answer will look like. One way to prepare myself for that answer, though, is to double check for any implications that have to do with the main idea. If the first paragraph is about job rewards, then the implication is that autonomy should be a job reward.
This actually goes against the main idea as mentioned in paragraph 1, so I can eliminate it.
This also goes against the first paragraph, which states that employees in large organizations tend to earn more, but have less autonomy. If B were describing a parallel relationship, then higher earners would have more autonomy.
C looks like a pretty safe bet for the right answer. It is treated as a benefit throughout the passage, and is implied to be a job reward in the first paragraph. Since rewards typically are what people want, C has to be correct.
D is here just test whether or not I have a good grasp of the passage. It is the opposite of what I am looking for, so I can safely eliminate it.
To answer this question, I have to know Franks’ definition of teaching. That is given in paragraph 2: “we would say an animal is a teacher if it modifies its behavior in the presence of another, at cost to itself, so another individual can learn more quickly.” So I need to find an analogous situation that involves someone sacrificing so someone else can learn something faster than if they tried to learn that something on their own.
Here, the teacher is “modifying” her behavior by taking off her sunglasses—which is at a cost to herself because she now has to deal with the harmful sun—in order to teach the toddler about how sunglasses work and can help in that situation. Broken down, A fits what I’m looking for, and so I can choose it and move on.
B is wrong because there is no clear element of sacrifice on the part of the teacher: no way that the teacher pays some cost in order to teach the toddler about how to handle cold.
C is also wrong. Though in this scenario, the teacher may be paying a cost—the labor of having to draw the square—there is no clear behavioral change by the teacher. The teacher is there to teach the child how to draw a square, and so is just fulfilling a teacher’s normal function.
D is wrong because, again, it lacks a sense of change or sacrifice on the part of the teacher.
It is easier to predict the answer to this question with the work I did to answer the previous question. I know that teaching behavior involves taking the learner into account: suffering for them, and modifying one’s behavior for the student. So I would imagine that the pace at which the leader ant—the teacher—moves is influenced by the student’s ability to move.
If the teacher ant was motivated by a sense of urgency, then that ant would just go do the task themselves, since the teacher ant can move four times more quickly than the student ants (paragraph 3). That makes A wrong.
B has the same problem that A does; it is focused on the teacher, and not on the learners.
C is a good candidate for the right answer, even if it is wordier than my prediction, because it describes the ant as oriented to its student, and modifying its behavior for that student. I would choose C and move on.
This is incorrect because, like A and B, it does not mention anything about what the learner ant needs from the teacher.
It is often difficult to predict the right answer to this kind of question, and it is far easier to predict what the wrong answers will look like. I know, for example, that the comparison mentioned will be an indicator of how much control the leader ant has, its willingness to teach the helper ant, how fast the helper ant can go, etc. So I am better off eliminating my way to the right answer.
This is incorrect because if the leader does not exercise restraint, then it will just hurry off and fulfill the task it is trying to teach the follower.
B is also incorrect because it would make sense that the leader ant would slow down in order to help the follower ant.
This has to be right, because the passage discussion clearly suggests that the leader ant is not trying to efficiently accomplish a task, but is instead trying to accomplish the task and teach another ant how to do the same. These ants are performing at the speed that the followers need, and so are not going to help anyone know how much effort the task should take.
D is also wrong even though it sounds like C because the effort put into teaching the follower will likely help the follower learn the task more quickly, and so work faster.
I know that Hauser distinguishes between learning and information in order to argue with Franks. This distinction is mentioned in paragraph 6, when he says that a warning call about predators is not teaching “even though it is clearly a transfer of information, because it doesn’t involve a ‘theory of mind.’” In paragraph 7, the author elaborates: “Hauser insists there must be an element of awareness by a teacher that the students don’t know something, if an animal’s behavior is to qualify as instructional.” With this information, I need to find an answer choice that lists a group who would be supported by this finding.
I can’t see how A has anything to do with a theory of mind, or people knowing or not knowing something.
B, however, is interesting because it seems to play into the idea that teaching is somehow more active than a transfer of information. We tend to think of rote memorization as passive learning: like being forced to download a book into one’s head. So it would make sense that opponents of rote memorization might find support in Hauser’s discussion. But while B is an attractive answer choice, it doesn’t perfectly align with my predictions, and so it makes sense to check the other answer choices in case one of them is better.
C has a similar problem to A: it doesn’t really have anything to do with theory of mind, or with the effort needed to teach.
D has a similar problem to A and C; nothing about it references what sets teaching apart from information transmission. Given that A, C and D have similar issues, B therefore makes the most sense as the right answer.
Hauser cites animals who are making others aware of threats to their survival as a case in which teaching is not happening. Since Hauser sees teaching as active and conceptual, the right answer must have something to do with being passive, or instinctive.
That’s not mentioned anywhere.
Same with B. Hauser actually seems to imply that many different animals exhibit this behavior.
This is close enough to learning that Hauser would likely disagree with C.
D, however, feels right, because doing something automatically suggests that the animal lacks the agency implied by teaching.
To determine the definition of a complex vocabulary word, I shuould pay attention to the sentence it is a part of: “Although they continue to acquire further layers of historical specificity, his street photographs, many of them shot in Midtown Manhattan in the 1950s and 1960s, have lost none of their kinetic immediacy” (paragraph 1). That these images are from Midtown Manhattan suggests that the author is referring to shots of the city, but it is the contrast keyword “Although” that helps explain the term the most. If “kinetic immediacy” is the opposite of acquiring “further layers of historical specificity,” then it must have something to do with making these photos feel less like history, and more alive and present. Since that also aligns with both “kinetic” and “immediacy,” that feels like a great prediction for the right answer.
A contains everything that I’m looking for: both a reference to the city, and a lively, present sense of it as opposed to a historical one. I can choose A confidently and move on.
Roadside scenes are mentioned in paragraph 1, but as part of a list of the kinds of photographs that Winogrand took. Since B is a different kind of photograph than the Midtown Manhattan ones, I cannot assume that B fits under the same description of “kinetic immediacy.” That makes B wrong.
C is the opposite of what I’m looking for, since it is what “kinetic immediacy” is contrasted against.
D is wrong for the same reason B is: because it describes a different kind of photo than the one mentioned in the question stem. I therefore cannot be sure that this photo also contains “kinetic immediacy,” which makes A the best answer.
I remember from my initial reading of the passage that Bill Jay was against presenting Winogrand’s slides because Winogrand had not edited them. Since there are almost always many possible logical outcomes for any such cause, it is not really worth it to try to predict what the wrong answers will look like. I just need to go through the choices and ask if each could logically be the result of the slides not being shown to the public.
A could definitely logically follow, since not displaying the slides would mean that they would not be seen by the public. A therefore has to be wrong.
B is also logical, since the slides are indicative of some of Winogrand’s abilities, and Jay argued that the slides would only be available for “research” (paragraph 4). That suggests that at least some critics would likely not have access to those slides, and so not be able to include them in the critical opinion on Winogrand. That makes B wrong.
This would be logical. Since only scholars would be able to research the slides, it would make sense to say that eventually, these color slides would be forgotten by everyone except these scholars. C can therefore be eliminated.
D is not an answer I would have predicted, but it is correct simply because Bill Jay’s argument has no relationship at all with the claims regarding Winogrand’s greatness. Those are made in a completely different part of the passage, and do not at all really depend on the color slides. Since D does not logically follow from Jay’s arguments, D has to be correct.
This is a question that requires me to keep Misrach’s reasoning in mind, and figure out what else that reasoning would allow for. That reasoning is given in the last paragraph, where Misrach claims that Winogrand gave those slides to the archives without condition, and so the archive had “permission to show and publish the work.” After all, “If Winogrand didn’t want the photographs in his archive to be seen, Misrach argued, he could have simply destroyed them.” Like the last question, I just need to be ready to evaluate each answer choice on the basis of whether or not it is in line with this logic.
This does not fit Misrach’s argument, since Winogrand donated his materials to the archive without conditions. A describes an artist who is placing conditions on how their material is to be used, so it is hard to see why Misrach would advocate showing that material. A has to be wrong.
B, however, makes sense. If Misrach is for showing the color slides that Winogrand did not print, why not also select other unprinted photographs by Winogrand to show off? After all, Winogrand donated them without condition. B is a great candidate for the right answer, and I can choose it and move on.
Though Misrach’s argument depends on Winogrand allowing the museum to use his works in any way they chose, Misrach isn’t speaking more broadly about how artists should approach their own archival material. He is focused mostly on the work and what was allowed, so C goes beyond the scope of his argument.
This is a wrong answer because it distorts the logic of Misrach’s argument. At no point does Misrach suggest that all of Winogrand’s work should be shown at the same time; it’s not even clear if that would be logistically possible. The point is that the museum should have the option to select what to show from all of Misrach’s materials, which is a slightly different issue. D is therefore wrong.
This one is solved by a quick passage check: “one curator argued that the ‘artist is not always in the best position to judge his or her work,’ citing the example of author Franz Kafka asking Max Brod to destroy his manuscripts and how Brod had ignored the request, to the world’s benefit.” The implication is that Brod was right to not destroy Kafka’s work, even though Kafka asked him to; that should be enough to find a right answer.
A fits my prediction, since Kafka’s right to have his work destroyed if he wanted it to be was overridden by Brod, and because the curator implies that destruction would have been a bad thing. I can choose A and move on.
B is wrong because it is too extreme an answer choice. The curator is using a single example, and one which has very strong justification: that keeping Kafka’s work around was “to the world’s benefit.” That one case not enough information to suggest that artists should never have work destroyed.
C is essentially the same answer choice as B, so I can eliminate it.
D is wrong for the same reason as B: it’s too extreme. The curator is not making a claim about all great artists; the reference to Kafka is just to artists who may not be “in the best position to judge his or her work” (last paragraph).
There is no paragraph marker here to tell me where these words are used, and there are too many words to search through the passage for them, so my best strategy here is to think of why the author would use these words in making the passage’s main argument. It might also help to figure out what these words have in common, since they must have something in common in order for a single question to be asking about them all. Since these refer to Winogrand’s work, it does not seem likely that they refer to the color slides alone, so these words must be referring to the other major argument about Winogrand: how good of a photographer he is. But while these words do say something about the quality of what they describe, they also imply more than that. Something subtle is not obvious; the same goes for something unexpected. Something complex could be obvious, but it is not simple. So perhaps these words have something to do with hidden qualities of Winogrand’s work. Scanning the first paragraph, where the argument about Winogrand’s greatness comes from, one sentence feels like it could help: “Winogrand made photographs that initially struck many viewers as devoid of formal strengths.” In other words, perhaps the right answer is referring to the possibility that the high quality of Winogrand’s work is not obvious to everyone.
I don’t have enough information to pick A. I also can’t see how those three words in the question stem have anything to do with money.
B, however, fits what I’m looking for. If viewers of Winogrand’s work have to put in effort to see his talent, then it makes sense to define that work as subtle or complex, and its skill unexpected. B fits my prediction well enough that I can choose it and move on.
C uses a pretty extreme word right off the bat, so I’m immediately suspicious of it. Given that the whole passage is about whether or not Winogrand’s work should be available to the public, the author clearly has to think that the public would get something out of seeing Winogrand’s work. That by itself already suggests that there are more people than photography experts who could appreciate Winogrand’s photography, so C has o be wrong.
I don’t see how subtle or unexpected has anything to do with D. This is also not a perspective that the author clearly has, so I feel good about eliminating D.
This is a nice straightforward strengthener. If Winogrand only stopped working with color because it got too expensive and made for bad prints, then I can safely assume that Winogrand would have wanted to use color if it was cheaper, or if the prints could be better. Hopefully that is enough to find a right answer.
This is incorrect because there is not enough information in the passage to suggest that Winogrand would have wanted his color slides printed. That’s enough to eliminate A.
The information in the question stem actually seems to implicitly contradict B. It is unlikely that Winogrand would have wanted to use something inferior, and if Winogrand only stopped shooting in black and white because of the cost and the state of the technology, that implies that Winogrand would have liked to keep shooting in color if those two issues were fixed. Since difficulty, expense and stability don’t necessarily have anything to do with style, B has to be wrong.
I don’t have a good sense of what the information in the question stem has to do with C, so I can safely eliminate it.
This, however, is a great answer choice. I may not know what Winogrand would have wanted to do with the color slides he made (choice A), but D suggests that one of the major obstacles to his shooting in color was removed. It is only logical to assume that doing that would make him more likely to return to color photography. That makes D correct.
To answer this question, I need to understand the function of the quoted part of the question stem. The passage argument is about Fairtrade, but it introduces the idea with the description of the supermarket participating in “Fairtrade Fortnight.” Since the passage never returns to “Fairtrade Fortnight,” It is a safe bet that “Fairtrade Fortnight” is mentioned to help establish or explain the concept of Fairtrade.
A fits this prediction perfectly; since “Fairtrade Fortnight” helps establish what Fairtrade is, it therefore provides background information. That makes A correct.
Judgments come later in the passage; the mention of “Fairtrade Fortnight” is primarily factual, and so without opinions or judgments. B is therefore incorrect.
C is wrong for the same reasons that B is wrong: because questioning comes later in the passage.
Why would this passage about Fairtrade practices need to include British terminology? D has to be wrong.
This is a quick passage check question, which sends me back to paragraph 2. A good strategy for this question type—especially when it is an EXCEPT question—is to eliminate the wrong answers, since I can predict what those look like: terms that are mentioned in paragraph 2.
Social justice is accounted for in these procedures: “Small farmers must be organized in cooperatives or other groups that allow democratic participation. Plantations and factories can use the Fairtrade label if they pay their workers decent wages.” These and many other parts of paragraph 2 are factors that broadly fit under the description of “social justice”: ways of making a society more just. That makes A incorrect.
This is definitely mentioned in paragraph 2, which lists “environmental standards” as part of Fairtrade certification. So B is also wrong.
Market value is mentioned in paragraph 2, but it is only mentioned in order to state that this is something that Fairtrade certification does not take into account: “the minimum price for Fairtrade coffee is $1.26 per pound, no matter how low the market price may fall.” That means that C has to be correct.
Ethical behavior is similar enough to social justice that D has to be wrong.
To answer this question, I need to evaluate the effect of the quoted argument on the claim that Fairtrade doesn’t work. To do this, it helps to be certain of Brink Lindsey’s argument. In paragraph 3, Lindsey seems worried about Fairtrade not helping: “With some justification, he argues that the real cause of the fall in coffee prices was not the profiteering of multinational corporations, but increases in coffee production in Brazil and Vietnam, combined with new techniques that make it possible to grow coffee with less labor, thus more cheaply.” In other words, Lindsey is worried that Fairtrade does not solve the problem of labor exploitation, since there are other forces at work affecting the price of coffee. But that feels like it misses the point of Fairtrade certification, which paragraph 2 seems to suggest is almost entirely designed to improve the life of workers and the environment. So I’m looking for an answer choice that states that this claim is not all that effective as a critique of Fairtrade, since it does not seem to account for the reasons for Fairtrade certification that the author raises.
This is incorrect because Lindsey is actually talking about the global price of coffee, which is affected by what happens in Brazil and Vietnam. A is therefore just factually wrong, and so has to be incorrect.
This works as a correct answer, since it fits what I’m looking for. Lindsey misunderstands the benefits of Fairtrade certification, which makes his critique of Fairtrade certification unreasonable.
I can eliminate C because Lindsey does not suggest that multinationals need to support Fairtrade to make it effective.
This is also clearly incorrect, for the same reasons A is: because while Lindsey is definitely specifically talking about coffee, his larger point is meant to speak to problems with Fairtrade more broadly.
This looks like a similar question to the last one; this question just leaves off the part about Fairtrade being a “dead end,” so this time I just need to evaluate what the author thinks of Brink Lindsey’s argument. The best place to look for this information is either before or after Lindsey’s argument is elaborated. The best hint in this passage comes after Lindsey’s argument: “The Fairtrade coffee campaign, however, can be seen as doing just what Lindsey recommends” (paragraph 5). For the author to react to Lindsey’s critique by saying that Fairtrade actually does what Lindsey wants is to imply that Lindsey must have a point; if Lindsey did not, the author would either contest Lindsey’s argument, or just ignore it. So I’m looking for an answer choice which says that Lindsey’s claims are worth something.
A is what I’m looking for here, since it suggests that there is some merit to Lindsey’s claims: enough at least for the author to use Lindsey’s concerns to strengthen the overall case for Fairtrade.
At no point does the author suggest that Lindsey’s argument is inhumane; that’s just not said, and so B cannot be the right answer.
This is a very specific complement, but one that the author never states. For C to be a better answer than A, the author would need to explicitly talk about the values behind Lindsey’s argument, and how they make sense when taken in conjunction with each other.
The author doesn’t mention bias at all when it comes to Lindsey, and so D has to be wrong.
To answer this question, I need to figure out what part of the passage connects with the scenario in the question stem. I know that electronics are not really mentioned in the passage, but trade barriers ring a faint bell. The passage mentions those in paragraph 4: “In Lindsey’s view, if we want to assist coffee growers, we should encourage them either to abandon coffee and produce more profitable crops—and here he rightly points to rich nations’ trade barriers and subsidies as obstacles that must be dismantled—or to move into more profitable, higher-value products, like specialty coffees.” The implication here is that trade barriers somehow keep people from producing “more profitable crops.” So I can therefore deduce that if trade barriers were removed, electronics would become more profitable, since a barrier to profitability would have been removed.
A cannot be right, since the passage does not really discuss how an industry develops a Fairtrade version of itself.
B is correct because it is exactly what I was looking for: a choice which states that the situation above would make electronics more profitable.
C echoes a claim made in the passage about coffee, but the passage does not relate C to trade barriers at all, so C cannot be correct.
D is wrong for the same reason as C: because trade barriers only relate to a very small portion of the passage, and one that does not have to do with more efficient technologies.
This is a difficult question to predict the right answer to, since there can be many possible ways to strengthen an argument. I just need to keep the author’s main point in mind—that Fairtrade practices are worth pursuing—and look for an answer that either directly argues this, or that eliminates a possible weakener to that claim.
A’s effect on the passage is unclear. It could be referring to challenges with certifying that someone is following Fairtrade principles, which would weaken the passage, or a company’s willingness to skirt their own country’s labor laws: thus making a better case for Fairtrade practices. Since both of these readings are quite possible, A cannot be right. The right answer needs to undeniably strengthen the argument, which A does not.
B actually weakens the passage argument, since the reference to “$12 for a pound of coffee” is actually a reference to Fairtrade coffee. If people are not willing to pay more for their coffee, then Fairtrade coffee will be uncompetitive, and so will not help the workers these practices are meant to help.
C would also weaken the passage argument, since it attacks one of the primary reasons for Fairtrade to exist. If C is true, one might argue that there is one less reason to pursue Fairtrade practices, and that is the very definition of a weakener. D has to be the right answer.
But D doesn’t look like the right answer on first glance because it doesn’t seem to mention Fairtrade practices. However, D strengthens the passage by attacking a potential weakener: the one mentioned in paragraph 6, which states that “Economists might reply that if you want to help feed and educate their children, you would be better advised to pay $10 for a pound of non-Fairtrade coffee and give the $2 you save to an aid agency that provides food and education to poor children.” The author deals with this objection by sidestepping it: by talking about other benefits to Fairtrade. D deals with this objection more directly by pointing at problems with helping people through aid agencies. If D is correct, then I have one less reason to be concerned with Fairtrade, which in turn makes the argument stronger.
The last paragraph is luckily pretty explicit about what its hope—that is, the hope that Fairtrade practices will proliferate—depends on: “Its success depends on market demand, not political lobbying.” So I need an answer that describes consumers wanting what Fairtrade has to offer: not just a higher quality product, but a more ethical one.
A is easy to eliminate because it is specifically disregarded by the last paragraph.
B is easy to eliminate because trade barriers are not mentioned in the last paragraph.
This is what I’m looking for, since it is one way to define “market demand.”
This has to be wrong because the author argues in paragraph 5 that Fairtrade certification gives a product high status. I can safely eliminate D.
Flaw questions like this are somewhat rare, in part because they are so difficult. They usually ask test-takers to both understand an error in reasoning made by some passage argument, and to be able to identify it from a list of answer choices that are usually abstractly phrased. The first step is always to identify the flaw, and most flaws are assumptions that are unjustified. In paragraph 3, historians are described as not convinced of the Iroquois influence thesis, and list Madison as a reason for this: “Some scholars point out that Madison, in the Federalist Papers, surveyed models of government from Europe, as well as from ancient Rome and Greece.” The implication here is that Madison could not have been influenced by the Iroquois because he wrote about European models of government, but why would that have to be the case? It’s possible that Madison was influenced by the Iroquois, but just chose to not write about them. In other words, the passage assumes, without justification, that just because Madison wrote about one, he could not also be influenced by the other. That should be enough to find an answer choice.
For A to be correct, the passage would have to suggest that something caused something else. It is possible to read the reference to Madison as arguing that Madison’s preference for democracy was caused by European models of democratic government, but it would not make sense to say that the passage erroneously reverses cause and effect: that somehow Madison’s preference for democracy caused European models of government to be democratic. A has to be wrong.
There is no analogy in the Madison argument; Madison is an example, not an analogy. So B has to be incorrect.
C is also incorrect because there is no clear principle being invoked, and certainly not one that is inapplicable.
This has to be the right answer because it is the last one left, but it also fits. The “mutual exclusivity” in D refers to the assumption that Madison had to either be influenced by the Iroquois or by Europeans: that he could not be influenced by both. Since nothing logically precludes this, and the passage does not argue for this mutual exclusivity, it is not justified, making D a correct description of a flaw made by the passage.
Another tough question, since it also asks me to be able to generalize Levy’s argument about influence. Because I know the passage is about the Iroquois influence thesis, I know that A is the Iroquois, and B is America. Looking at the passage, Levy is mentioned in paragraph 4 as part of the arguments attacking the Iroquois influence thesis, where he argues that the comparisons between the Iroquois League and American democracy are “inexact” because, “although Franklin’s title for the deliberative body (‘Grand Council’) is the same as that generally applied to the Iroquois central council, Franklin’s proposed number of delegates was forty-eight, whereas that for the Iroquois council was fifty.” The first thing that strikes me about this reference is how weak it seems as an attack on the Iroquois influence thesis; after all, the two deliberative bodies had the same name, and they had nearly the same number of delegates. For this to be an argument against the claim that the Iroquois influenced America (A influenced B), the only grounds for that claim are in that difference between 48 and 50 delegates. In other words, Levy is saying that we can only be sure that A influenced B when the two are exactly similar: if, in this case, both Grand Councils had 50 delegates.
This is incorrect because Levy admits that A and B are quite similar, but is still implied to believe that the Iroquois did not influence the early Americans.
This is correct; it is exactly what I’m looking for.
C is worth eliminating because I know that the Iroquois and America had one feature in common: their names. Since that was not enough to say that the Iroquois influenced America, C has to be wrong.
D is also wrong because it is not clear whether the Iroquois Grand Council had more features in common with proposals for America’s government than differences. B has to be correct.
The new information in the question stem strongly supports the Iroquois influence thesis, since it suggests that the U.S. government may have been influenced by Native American models of government. I know that the thesis is Grinde and Johansen’s, since much of the passage attacks them.
This has to be correct.
Levy argues against Grinde and Johansen, so B must be wrong.
Payne is making a more nuanced and neutral point about Grinde and Johansen’s thesis. Since it is not clear that Payne himself believes in that thesis, C is worse than A.
The passage author does not clearly agree or disagree with the Iroquois influence thesis, so D cannot be the right answer.
This new information has to implicitly weaken the Iroquois influence thesis, because that thesis depends on the assumption that the Americans could only have inherited features that they have in common with the Iroquois from the Iroquois. If those principles that Grinde and Johansen attribute to the Iroquois are actually common to all nations, then it makes it far less likely that the Iroquois influenced the American Constitution. Maybe the two peoples were influenced by some other government, or maybe there are just some principles that governments have to adhere to when they are being formed. So I’m looking for an answer choice which suggests that the information in the question stem challenges the Iroquois influence thesis.
Levy’s objection is about exactness, and there is nothing here about how exact two groups need to be before one can say that one influenced the other. A has to be wrong.
This is easy to eliminate because Payne’s distinction is so much more complex than the information in the question stem.
This has to be correct, since it is just another way of saying that the information in the question stem weakens the Iroquois influence thesis.
The new information does the exact opposite, which makes D wrong.
Another challenging question, this time because Payne’s point is extended and difficult to follow. Looking through Payne’s claims, they break down to being aware of differences between perception and reality: “(a) the Iroquois as they actually were in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; (b) the Iroquois as the authors of the Articles of Confederation and the framers of the Constitution understood them to be in the late eighteenth century; and (c) the Iroquois as they have been described by the proponents of the Iroquois influence thesis.” So I am looking for an answer choice which involves potential differences between perceptions, and between perception and reality.
A has nothing to do with perception and reality, so I can eliminate A.
B definitely talks about perception and reality, so I feel good about B. However, this is a very difficult question, so I will feel better about B if I eliminate my way through the other answer choices.
C does not have to deal with differences between perception and reality. Understanding values does not necessarily require one to shift one’s perspective, and there is no clear analogue to the “structure” of a language with the passage argument. C is wrong.
D also lacks a clear reference to perception and reality, which makes D wrong.