Directions: The questions in this section are based on the reasoning contained in brief statements or passages. For some questions more than one of the choices could conceivably answer the question.However, you are to choose the best answer. that is, the response that most accurately and completely answers the question. You should not make assumptions that are by commonsense standards implausible,superfluous, or incompatible with the passage After you have chosen the best answer, blacken the corresponding space on your answer sheet.
1. Francis: Pailure to become properly registered to vote prevents one-third of the voting-age citizens of Lagonia from voting. If local election boards made the excessively cumbersome registration process easier. more people would register and vote
Sharon: The high number of citizens not registered to vote has persisted despite many attempts to make registering easier. Surveys show that most of these citizens believe that their votes would not make a difference. Until that belief is changed, simplifying the registration process will not increase the percentage of citizens registering to vote
The main issue in dispute between Francis and Sharon is
(A) whether changing the voter registration process would be cumbersome (B) why so many citizens do not register to vote (C) what percentage of those registered to vote actually vote (D) whether local election boards have simplified the registration process (E) why the public lacks confidence in the effects of voting
2. Advertisement Anyone who thinks moisturizers are not important for beautiful skin should consider what happens to the earth, the skin of the word, in times of drought. Without regular infusions of moisture the ground becomes lined and cracked and its lush loveliness fades away. Thus your skin, too, should be protected from the protection provided by regular infusions of Dewyfresh the drought-defying moisturizer.
The Dewyfresh advertisement exhibits which one of the following errors of reasoning?
(A) It treats something that is necessary for bringing about a state of affairs as something that is sufficient to bring about that state of affairs (B) It treats the fact that two things regularly occur together as proof that there is a single thing that is the cause of them both (C) It overlooks the fact that changing what people think is the case does not necessarily change what is the case. (D) It relies on the ambiguity of the term "infusion." which can designate either a process or the product of that process (E) It relies on an analogy between two things that are insufficiently alike in the respects in which they would have to be alike for the conclusion to be supported.
Questions 3-4
M: The Greek alphabet must have been invented by some individual who knew the Phoenician writing system and who wanted to have some way of recording Homeric epies and thereby preserving expressions of a highly developed traditin of oral poetry.
P: Your hypothesis is laughable! What would have been the point of such a person s writing Homeric epices down? Surely a person who knew them well enough to write them down would not need to read them, and no one else could read them, according to your hypothesis.
3. Which one of the following is an argumentative strategy that P uses in responding to M?
(A) attacking M s understanding of the literary value of oral poetry (B) disagreeing with M s thesis without attempting to refute it (C) challenging M s knowledge of the Phoenician writing system (D) attempting to undermine M s hypothesis by making it appear absurd (E) providing an alternative interpretation of evidence put forward by M
4. P s argument is vulnerable to which one of the following criticisms?
(A) It fails to demonstrate that the Phoenician alphabet alone could have provided the basis for the Greek alphabet (B) It incorrectly assumes that the first text ever written in Greek was a Homeric poem (C) It confuses the requirements for a complex oral tradition with the requirements of a written language (D) It attempts to demonstrate the truth of a hypothesis merely by showing that it is possible. (E) It overlooks the possibility that person who invented the Greek alphabet did so with the intention of teaching it to others.