PrepTest 131, Section 1, Question 21
Designer: Any garden and adjoining living room that(68 more words not shown)
The designer's statements, if true,(8 more words not shown)
- AA garden separated(24 more words not shown)
- BIn cold weather,(32 more words not shown)
- CA garden and(19 more words not shown)
- DA garden can(24 more words not shown)
- EExcept in summer,(30 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
I can still tell a couch from the plants outside. But the designer is not claiming that a garden and living room become indistinguishable. The claim is that they can look connected, forming one visual space through the glass doors.
Opening the doors creates that effect if it was absent and strengthens it if it was already there. Removing the glass barrier can make the connection more pronounced. The final statement adds a way to keep the effect strong in colder months: coordinate the garden with the room and give the garden visual interest of its own.
What we’re looking for
For what follows, keep track of what these statements provide. They give conditions that produce or sustain the effect. They do not generally tell us that the effect is impossible without those conditions. An answer turning a helpful arrangement into an exclusive requirement would add something we were not given.
Working the answers
- A
The passage does not make visual interest a requirement for coordination. It lists coordination and strong visual interest together as a way to maintain a strong merging effect. Saying those two features work together does not establish that one feature cannot exist without the other.
- B
The final statement tells us when the effect remains strong during colder months. It does not say that a garden lacking coordination can never merge visually with the room. B turns a stated way to sustain the effect into a necessary condition for any effect at all.
- C
The passage explicitly allows the effect to exist before the doors open: opening intensifies it “if it does” already exist. C instead requires the doors to be open before the spaces can merge. The designer does not impose that restriction.
- DCorrect
Opening the sliding doors is stated to create the effect if it does not already exist. That rule does not require the garden to supply strong visual interest. So a garden without that feature can still merge visually with the room through the open-door arrangement. The final statement gives an additional combination that maintains a strong effect in colder months; it does not cancel the earlier way to create the effect.
- E
Summer is offered as an example of when the doors may be open, not as the only season when opening them can strengthen the effect. Opening them in spring or fall could have the same result under the stated rule. E invents a seasonal restriction.
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