PrepTest 130, Section 1, Question 13
It is a given that to be an(51 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(10 more words not shown)
- ATo be an(13 more words not shown)
- BIf one constantly(19 more words not shown)
- CIf one's mind(13 more words not shown)
- DTo inspire the(15 more words not shown)
- EIf one constantly(13 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
To be intriguing, a person must be able to keep others curious. That opening gives us a requirement. The next sentence offers a way to meet it: keep broadening your abilities and extending your intellectual reach.
Think of taking up new hobbies, reading, and learning more about the world. The passage says that continual growth can keep other people curious about you. It doesn't say this is the only way; perhaps someone could inspire curiosity by being mysterious in some other respect.
What we’re looking for
On a first reading, those first two sentences could look like premises leading toward a further conclusion. But then the last sentence explains the second: continual mental expansion makes you impossible to fully comprehend, so you remain a mystery to others. For the conclusion question, that direction of support tells us where to look. We want a restatement of the supported claim that continual growth enables you to inspire others' perpetual curiosity.
Working the answers
- A
This repeats the opening requirement for being intriguing. It sets up the topic, but it isn't the claim the final sentence explains. The argument develops a particular way of inspiring that curiosity.
- BCorrect
This restates the second sentence: continually broadening abilities and intellectual reach enables a person to inspire perpetual curiosity in others. The final sentence supports it by explaining how continual growth keeps the person from being fully comprehended.
- C
This belongs to the supporting explanation. Being impossible to fully comprehend makes someone a mystery, which helps explain why continual expansion can keep others curious. C gives part of the reason for the conclusion rather than the conclusion itself.
- D
This changes one way of inspiring curiosity into a required way. The passage says continual growth will enable you to inspire curiosity; D says you must grow in that way to inspire it. Other ways could exist, so D isn't even a faithful restatement of the claim.
- E
Whose curiosity? The passage concerns other people's curiosity about the growing person. E instead says that the person doing the growing will remain curious. Those are different claims, even though both use the word “curiosity.”
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