LR Drill Set 7, Question 12
The coypu, a rodent native to South America,(69 more words not shown)
The argument proceeds(1 more words not shown)
- Aquestioning the accuracy(15 more words not shown)
- Bsuggesting that trapping(11 more words not shown)
- Csuggesting an alternative(9 more words not shown)
- Dchallenging the idea(17 more words not shown)
- Edemonstrating that trapping(16 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
The coypu population fell sharply. What deserves the credit—the traps or the cold?
The government points to its trapping program and the year's 90 percent reduction. But that same year brought an extremely cold winter, and the passage says coypus can't survive severely cold weather. Now we have another possible explanation for the decline.
I'd still ask whether this particular winter was cold enough in the places where the coypus lived to cause the proposed effect. “Extremely cold” invites that connection, but we shouldn't invent a temperature threshold or assume every animal died. The important move is clear even if we have questions about the evidence: the author challenges which cause deserves credit.
What we’re looking for
The method question asks us to describe that move. The author doesn't dispute the size of the decline. The author introduces a competing explanation that makes the government's attribution to trapping less secure. We don't need to establish the exact contribution of either cause to identify that reasoning.
Working the answers
- A
The 90 percent reduction is accepted as the event to be explained. The disagreement concerns why it happened. Questioning the cause of a reported result isn't the same as questioning whether the result occurred or whether the reported number is accurate.
- B
An alternative cause doesn't show trapping made no significant difference. Trapping could have contributed alongside the cold, or its effect could have been smaller than the government claimed. The passage questions giving the program credit for the decline without establishing what trapping alone would have accomplished.
- CCorrect
Severe winter weather provides another explanation for the rapid population decline. Because the animals cannot survive severely cold conditions, the winter could account for deaths that the government attributes to its program. That challenges the government's causal claim while accepting the observed reduction. C doesn't require the author to prove trapping had no effect whatsoever.
- D
The argument isn't asking whether reducing the population was morally acceptable or whether the government chose an appropriate goal. Calling the government's claim unjustified concerns its claim of success, not the justification for trying to reduce this pest population. D shifts from causal credit to whether the action itself should have been taken.
- E
We aren't comparing the trapping program with all other measures the government could choose. The severe winter is offered as an alternative cause, not as a government policy option. Nor does the passage establish which available control method would be most effective. E turns a challenge to the explanation into a ranking the argument never provides.
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