PrepTest 112, Section 3, Question 4
Mary: Computers will make more information available to(50 more words not shown)
The dialogue most strongly supports(12 more words not shown)
- Acomputers will contribute(10 more words not shown)
- Bcomputers will increase(11 more words not shown)
- Ccomputers will make(6 more words not shown)
- Ddependency on computers(7 more words not shown)
- Esynthesizing knowledge and(12 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
More information doesn't automatically mean easier understanding. I might be able to find a claim instantly and still need help deciding whether it's reliable. Someone could post an invented biographical detail online; the mere availability of that claim wouldn't make it knowledge.
That's my hesitation about Mary's argument. Joyce raises a different concern: even reliable information may need someone to organize and explain it. Imagine opening a technical biology paper. Having the paper in front of me doesn't guarantee I understand it. A specialist could help make sense of what I'm reading.
What we’re looking for
Both responses make us question whether greater access eliminates work an expert does. But the disagreement question concerns the speakers' actual positions, not which objection I prefer. Mary expects computers to make learning without experts easier. Joyce expects the larger amount of knowledge to increase dependence on experts. I'd look for that contrast: will computers make ordinary people more reliant on expert help?
Working the answers
- A
Mary clearly expects computers to make a substantial difference in access to information. Joyce doesn't deny that computers will spread knowledge; she questions what that increased access means for the need for specialists. We don't have one speaker endorsing negligible dissemination and the other rejecting it.
- BCorrect
Joyce says computers will probably create greater dependence on experts. Mary argues that their greater supply of information will make knowledge easier to acquire without consulting experts. Those are the opposed expectations the exchange is about.
We don't need to turn Mary's view into a claim that experts will become completely unnecessary. The contrast is between easier independent learning and greater need to turn to experts.
- C
This is Mary's starting point, not the point Joyce disputes. Joyce's response uses the history of increasing knowledge to predict a greater need for help interpreting it. She doesn't argue that computers will fail to increase the information available. The disagreement concerns what follows from that increase.
- D
Depending on computers is different from depending on experts. Both speakers might think people will use computers more while disagreeing about whether that use will make expert advice more necessary. Neither gives us the opposed positions about computer dependence that D requires.
- E
Joyce means experts in the subject being explained, not necessarily experts in computers. A specialist in animal biology could explain a paper about giraffes without being a computer specialist. The passage also doesn't establish that only one group can synthesize or explain knowledge. E adds both a narrower kind of expert and an exclusive claim the speakers don't debate.
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