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Identify the evidence for each answer and the specific flaw in its nearest competitor. Complete the four written drills in the lesson before this practice set. Question numbers follow the shuffled order; Guide question labels match the lesson references.
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The drill
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Question 5
Guide question 3.05
Foundation
The railway helped standardize local timekeeping. Before its arrival, neighboring towns often kept different times. Afterward, town clocks increasingly followed the railway timetable.
What is the main function of the final sentence?
Why this answer
Evidence function
Correct choice: It supplies evidence for the opening claim.
Increasing agreement with one timetable supports the claim of standardization.
A: No alternative cause is offered.
C: The sentence reports behavior, not a definition.
D: A later change does not qualify the earlier difference.
If you missed it: Connect the detail to the claim it supports.
Instrumental music can shape a story without representing a particular character. In one film, a repeated piano figure appears whenever the setting changes, helping viewers recognize transitions between locations.
How does the film example support the opening claim?
Why this answer
Example versus generalization
Correct choice: It illustrates a structural function unrelated to identifying a character.
The piano figure marks changes in location, demonstrating the stated possibility.
A: One example does not establish frequency.
B: Viewers' preferences are not discussed.
C: The music marks settings, not a character.
If you missed it: State exactly what the example demonstrates.
Although the library's new workshop attracted fewer participants than expected, most attendees returned for later sessions. The workshop therefore showed promise as a way to sustain engagement, even if its initial reach was limited.
Which statement best captures the writer's assessment?
Why this answer
Concession and qualification
Correct choice: The workshop's repeat attendance is encouraging despite its limited initial participation.
A preserves both the positive assessment and its limitation.
B: It reverses the writer's conclusion.
C: It expands a limited result to most users.
D: Returning attendees are not first-time participants.
If you missed it: Retain both sides of 'although.'
Earlier critics blamed a translator for removing the novel's comic scenes. Newly recovered notebooks show that the novelist had removed those scenes before translation began. The omissions should therefore be attributed to the novelist's revision rather than the translator's choices.
How does the writer respond to the earlier critics?
Why this answer
Attributing viewpoints
Correct choice: By accepting the omissions but revising who was responsible.
The writer agrees that omissions occurred but changes their attribution.
A: The omissions are explicitly accepted.
B: Responsibility, not importance, is disputed.
D: No restoration is described.
If you missed it: Identify separately what happened and who was responsible.
An archaeologist argues that a building was used for collective food preparation. Several large hearths and vessels capable of holding far more food than one household would ordinarily require were found inside.
Which statement most directly supplies the reasoning behind the archaeologist's argument?
Why this answer
Connecting evidence to a claim
Correct choice: The equipment's capacity is consistent with preparing food for multiple households.
B connects the observed capacity to the proposed collective use.
A: Wealth does not connect this equipment to collective preparation.
C: Manufacturing location is irrelevant to the proposed use.
D: Regional meal frequency is neither supplied nor needed.
If you missed it: Complete 'This evidence supports the claim because...'.
Oral accounts sometimes disagree about the dates of a neighborhood's redevelopment. Such disagreement limits their usefulness for constructing a precise timeline. Yet these accounts can reveal residents' experiences of displacement, which official planning documents rarely describe.
Which choice best states the main idea?
Why this answer
Main point
Correct choice: Oral accounts can illuminate experiences despite limitations in establishing dates.
A captures the distinction between two kinds of historical usefulness.
B: It discards the stated value of the accounts.
C: The documents rarely describe those experiences.
D: No comparison of date accuracy is given.
If you missed it: Find the idea that explains both the limitation and the benefit.
Researchers randomly assigned volunteers to learn unfamiliar symbols in either one session or three sessions across a week. Both groups received equal total study time. A week after each group's final session, the three-session group recalled more symbols on average.
Which conclusion is best supported?
Why this answer
Experimental limits
Correct choice: Spacing study improved later average recall under the tested conditions.
D matches the manipulated schedule, measured recall, and group-average result.
A: An average difference is not a universal guarantee.
B: No biological mechanism was measured.
C: Lower recall does not mean zero recall.
If you missed it: Match the conclusion's outcome and population to the study.
Counting newly planted trees offers a simple measure of a city's planting program. But a count cannot show how many trees survive or where shade is most needed. Evaluations should therefore include survival rates and the distribution of shade, alongside planting totals.
What is the main purpose of the passage?
Why this answer
Purpose
Correct choice: To recommend a broader evaluation than a single convenient measure provides.
The writer identifies limits of a metric and recommends complementary measures.
A: The criticism concerns evaluation, not planting itself.
B: The issue is what counts reveal, not counting accuracy.
D: Equal shade is not established.
If you missed it: Describe the author's action, not just the subject.
A historian argues that women's high share of petitions in one surviving archive reflects their unusually frequent participation in local government. Another researcher notes that women submitted most household petitions and cautions that the archive may preserve different categories at different rates. If household petitions survived disproportionately well, their prominence could distort the apparent distribution of participation.
Which finding would most directly support the researcher's caution?
Why this answer
Evidence and competing explanations
Correct choice: An earlier inventory lists many commercial petitions that are absent today and were predominantly submitted by men.
A identifies differential loss that could inflate women's apparent share of surviving petitions.
B: Topic variety does not establish unequal preservation.
C: Illegibility does not establish the proposed category-level loss.
D: Another town's procedure does not reveal losses in this archive.
If you missed it: Predict the evidence the competing explanation requires before comparing choices.
Some critics treat the narrator's meticulous catalogues of household objects as evidence of emotional detachment. Yet the catalogues become most elaborate immediately after encounters the narrator otherwise refuses to discuss. Their apparent impersonality need not indicate an absence of feeling; it may instead be the form through which the narration registers feelings it cannot explicitly acknowledge.
Which statement best expresses the passage author's position?
Why this answer
Literary viewpoints and qualification
Correct choice: The catalogues may indirectly express feeling through apparently impersonal description.
D preserves the proposed interpretation and its tentative force.
A: This treats increased detail as increased detachment, reversing the proposed interpretation.
B: The timing of the catalogues is precisely the evidence used to interpret feeling.
C: The author questions detachment; other characters' experiences are not discussed.
If you missed it: Track the author's alternative and preserve 'may.'
In a hypothetical experiment, algae previously exposed to moderate light produce more pigment P and sustain less damage during a later intense-light exposure than algae given no prior light exposure. Researchers propose that P contributes to protection by absorbing damaging wavelengths. To distinguish that explanation from other effects of prior exposure, they compare normal algae with algae engineered to lack P but otherwise respond similarly to light.
Which result would most directly weaken the proposed protective role of P?
Why this answer
Weakening a proposed mechanism
Correct choice: After identical prior exposure, algae lacking P sustain no more damage than normal algae under the same intense light.
C removes the proposed protective pigment without reducing measured protection, weakening its assigned role. This need not conclusively rule out every possible contribution.
A: Production follows exposure but does not test protection.
B: Absorption alone does not establish reduced damage.
D: This shows that prior exposure protects even algae lacking P, but it does not compare damage between the groups, so P could still add protection in normal algae.
If you missed it: Test the proposed cause against its claimed outcome.
Printed anthologies are often used to reconstruct a period's popular poetry. Yet publishers selected poems partly for their suitability to print, while performances circulated works that never entered print at all. The frequency of a poem's appearance in surviving anthologies thus reflects editorial selection as well as whatever popularity it enjoyed. A history based exclusively on those anthologies would therefore risk ______.
Which choice most logically completes the text?
Why this answer
Supported logical completion
Correct choice: treating the preferences of publishers as a complete picture of poetic culture
B follows the warning that print selection provides an incomplete, filtered record of a broader culture.
A: Reliable tracking of public taste is not established.
C: The passage supplies no ranking of the two forms' popularity.
D: It supplies no evidence that readers disliked selected poems.
If you missed it: Complete the established argument without introducing an unmeasured comparison.