LR Drill Set 12, Question 1
Many specialists in education believe that, in general,(56 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(12 more words not shown)
- AStudents are more(27 more words not shown)
- BDespite the fact(18 more words not shown)
- CStudents who write(34 more words not shown)
- DStudents do better(20 more words not shown)
- EStudents do equally(21 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Writing in the room where you researched could help you remember the material. Think about a desk you associate with studying: returning to that setting might bring the work to mind. The specialists say something like that happens here, and they say it improves students' papers.
Then why tell students to write somewhere else?
There must be a catch. So far, we've only heard a benefit.
Perhaps the associations also bring back mistaken impressions that get into the paper. That's one possibility to investigate, although the passage hasn't established it. More generally, I want some downside that could outweigh the better performance.
What we’re looking for
The question asks us to make sense of the advice. Keep both facts: the specialists believe that using the same room helps the paper, and they still recommend a different room. We need a reason why a better paper might not be their only goal.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
Here is a different catch from the one I imagined: students are more likely to retain what they learned if they write somewhere else. Getting a good result on this paper and remembering the material afterward are two different benefits.
If the specialists care about lasting learning, their advice makes sense. They can accept that the familiar room helps the immediate performance while recommending a different room for better retention. A doesn't say students in the familiar room learn nothing or forget everything; a greater chance of retaining the material is enough to supply a reason for the advice.
- B
Less than conclusive evidence doesn't explain a recommendation to do the opposite. The specialists could recognize some uncertainty and still recommend the method they believe generally works. B supplies no disadvantage of that method and no benefit of changing rooms.
- C
A similar room can apparently reproduce the benefit. That's interesting, but why should the specialists prefer it? A student could get the same result in the original room. Showing that another setting also works doesn't explain the advice against using the first one.
- D
This gives us another benefit of overlap between the research room and the writing room. Even doing part of the research there helps. That makes the advice against using the same room harder to understand; it doesn't supply the missing drawback.
- E
Revising a paper is a later task. If room choice makes no difference to revisions, that might explain why the specialists have no preference about where students revise. It doesn't explain why they advise against writing the paper in the setting they believe helps students write better.
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