PrepTest 124, Section 3, Question 16
Editorial: Contrary to popular belief, teaching preschoolers is(31 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(8 more words not shown)
- APreschoolers have a(10 more words not shown)
- BChildren intensely curious(8 more words not shown)
- CSome older children(8 more words not shown)
- DPreschoolers ask as(7 more words not shown)
- EPreschool teachers generally(9 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Being curious isn't the same as being easy to teach.
A preschooler might love discovering new things and have an excellent system for sorting toys. Those traits could help with learning. But what about keeping the child's attention on the thing we're trying to teach? What about managing a room full of children who all want to do something different?
The editorial moves from two helpful traits to a much broader conclusion about how difficult teaching is. That's the leap I'd question. Systems and curiosity could be useful while other demands still make teaching preschoolers especially hard.
What we’re looking for
We're asked to weaken the argument. Give us one of those overlooked difficulties. We don't need to deny that preschoolers are curious or that their systems help them learn. We need a reason those advantages don't settle the overall teaching challenge.
Working the answers
- A
Imitating adults and following routines doesn't identify a difficulty in teaching preschoolers. If anything, those tendencies might help them participate in an organized classroom. A provides no reason to doubt the editorial's conclusion about how hard teaching them is.
- BCorrect
Their curiosity comes with a very short attention span. Imagine teaching the letters A and B while a child keeps switching to questions about dinosaurs. The child may be intensely curious, but keeping that curiosity directed toward the lesson can be difficult.
This gives us exactly the kind of missing consideration we wanted. A trait that helps children explore doesn't guarantee they can stay with what a teacher is explaining. The editorial's favorable observations can be true while the job remains hard.
- C
Older children having useful learning systems doesn't tell us whether teaching preschoolers is difficult. We would need to know more about how those systems and other demands affect teaching each group. Merely finding the same trait in some older children leaves the argument's gap untouched.
- D
The number of creative questions isn't a measure of teaching difficulty. Those questions could be helpful, distracting, easy to answer, or demanding. D doesn't establish which. Preschoolers asking as many as older children gives us no particular obstacle to point to.
- E
Lower reported stress points toward teaching preschool being less demanding, rather than more. Stress isn't a perfect measure of difficulty, so this wouldn't prove the editorial's conclusion. But it supplies no reason to reject it, and we're looking for evidence against the argument.
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