PrepTest 115, Section 4, Question 7
Jorge: You won't be able to write well(84 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(11 more words not shown)
- Awhether only those(24 more words not shown)
- Bwhether people who(20 more words not shown)
- Cwhether only people(12 more words not shown)
- Dwhether people who(19 more words not shown)
- Ewhether Ruth's ideas(24 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Do I have to belong to a period's target audience to write well about its music? Jorge thinks Ruth's age in the 1960s rules her out. But someone could study a period they didn't experience as an interested teenager or young adult. Think of a writer explaining ancient Greece: we wouldn't require that writer to have lived there.
Ruth makes that kind of objection using ancient Rome. Living writers can write well about Roman culture even though they weren't part of it. She uses that example to challenge Jorge's reason for excluding her from writing about 1960s rock music.
What we’re looking for
Rome and rock music are different subjects, of course. We don't have to decide that Ruth has proved her case beyond any possible objection. We need to identify the disagreement: does being outside the music's original teenage and young-adult audience disqualify someone from writing well about it? Jorge treats Ruth's age as a reason she cannot do it; Ruth challenges that restriction.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
This captures the restriction Ruth is challenging: only people who were teenagers or in their early twenties during the 1960s are qualified to write about that period's rock music.
Jorge literally addresses Ruth rather than announcing a rule about every possible writer, so “only” deserves a careful look. But his reason for excluding her is that she wasn't part of the age group the music was made by and for. A expresses the implied restriction behind that reasoning. Ruth's Roman example challenges the need to have belonged to the original culture or audience. That is the dispute the exchange develops.
- B
They aren't arguing that members of the original audience are unable to write well. Ruth could agree that those people can write well while insisting that other people can too. The dispute is about whether the original group is the only qualified group, not whether anyone in that group can write.
- C
Ancient culture is Ruth's example, not the subject on which Jorge takes an opposing position. Neither speaker gives a rule that writers must currently be older than their early twenties to write about ancient cultures. C supplies a new age restriction instead of identifying their disagreement.
- D
“Now” changes the group. Jorge's reasoning depends on how old someone was during the 1960s. A person who was a teenager then would be older now, but that change wouldn't remove the experience Jorge considers important. D asks about current age rather than age during the period being studied.
- E
Appealing to a particular audience isn't the same as writing well. Ruth could produce a well-informed account that some original fans disliked. The speakers debate her ability or qualification to write, not the likely reaction of the music's original audience to her ideas.
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