PrepTest 116, Section 2, Question 22
All parrots can learn to speak a few(46 more words not shown)
If the statements above are(10 more words not shown)
- ASome parrots that(7 more words not shown)
- BIf a parrot(19 more words not shown)
- CThe sweetest-tempered parrots(5 more words not shown)
- DAustralia is the(21 more words not shown)
- EAll species of(15 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Every parrot can learn some words. Some Australian parrots have a sweet temper. Those are two different facts, but they can fit together: the sweet-tempered parrots are still parrots.
Keep the third fact separate. A parrot raised from a chick by hand-feeding will almost always show affection for the person who raised it. That doesn't say the bird has a sweet temper toward everyone. A bird might love its owner and be unpleasant to other people.
What we’re looking for
For this must-be-true question, don't let all the details turn into one bigger claim. We know something about all parrots, something about some Australian parrots, and something about affection for a particular owner. The right answer needs only a connection those facts actually support.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
Take the sweet-tempered Australian parrots the passage says exist. Every one of them is a parrot, and all parrots can learn to speak a few words and phrases. So there are some parrots that both can learn to speak and have a sweet temper.
We don't need the hand-feeding fact to get here. Nor do we need to show that these birds already speak. The answer says they can learn, which is exactly what the first sentence gives us.
- B
There are two unsupported changes here. First, the hand-feeding fact concerns affection for an owner, not a generally sweet temper. Second, the passage gives hand-feeding as something that almost always produces that affection, not as the only route to it. It never says a parrot from outside Australia needs hand-feeding to be sweet-tempered.
- C
Some Australian parrots are sweet-tempered. That doesn't make them the sweetest parrots. Other parrots could be just as sweet or sweeter. A fact about having a quality doesn't establish the highest degree of that quality.
- D
Australia is one place the passage associates with sweet-tempered parrots, not the only place such birds can be found. There could be sweet-tempered parrots native to other places too. Since all parrots can learn words, those birds could have both qualities as well. The passage gives no basis for D's geographic restriction.
- E
We know about some parrots native to Australia, not every species of Australian pet bird. E expands both the number and the kind of birds covered. The passage doesn't establish that all Australian parrots are sweet-tempered, much less that every other Australian pet-bird species is.
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