PrepTest 126, Section 1, Question 23
A professor of business placed a case-study assignment(49 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(6 more words not shown)
- ASeveral colleagues of(24 more words not shown)
- BStudies consistently show(25 more words not shown)
- CSome people get(20 more words not shown)
- DScanning technology is(19 more words not shown)
- EBooks on cassette(30 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
A case-study assignment isn't a book.
The professor knows that fifty of seventy students printed this assignment. That might say something about reading a class handout on paper. But the conclusion concerns whether computer-delivered books will replace printed books. Why should this one classroom decision settle that much larger question?
There's a timing problem too. Imagine that seventy students would have printed it last year, fifty did this year, and thirty will next year. Today's majority could be part of a trend away from printing. Or younger students might have different habits when they reach college. The passage gives us no information about those possibilities.
What we’re looking for
To strengthen the argument, I'd want a reason to carry the observation beyond this assignment and this group, or evidence against the possibility that printing is disappearing over time. We need support for the future of printed books, not just another description of what happened in this class.
Working the answers
- A
This helps a little by showing that the behavior isn't confined to the professor's business course. But several students in other courses are still a narrow sample of people printing assignments. We haven't reached the broader population of computer users or established much about reading book-length material. B makes that connection more directly.
- BCorrect
The studies consistently find that most computer users print material longer than a few pages. That goes beyond a few students with one assignment: it describes a broad preference for paper when reading longer material, which is relevant to books. Delivering the text by computer wouldn't necessarily eliminate the demand to read it in printed form.
This doesn't guarantee that habits can never change. A strengthener needn't prove the whole conclusion. B supplies a broader, directly relevant pattern that makes the classroom observation a better basis for expecting printed material to remain useful.
- C
A possible vision problem could give someone a reason to avoid long periods of screen reading, but it doesn't tell us what people do instead. They might take breaks, read less, or accept the problem. We need more to get from this effect on some people to continued use of printed books.
- D
The answer itself leaves open careful editing as a solution. Also, printing a scanned file wouldn't remove errors already in that file. A problem with scanning doesn't establish that readers will continue to choose printed books, so this doesn't give the direct support B provides.
- E
Cassette recordings and movie adaptations are different alternatives to printed books. Their sales don't tell us how people respond to receiving the text itself by computer. We shouldn't assume all alternatives to print will be used in the same way.
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