PrepTest 133, Section 3, Question 3
The qwerty keyboard became the standard keyboard with(68 more words not shown)
The example above best illustrates(6 more words not shown)
- AOften it is(18 more words not shown)
- BPeople usually settle(12 more words not shown)
- CPeople often remain(17 more words not shown)
- DThe emotional cost(11 more words not shown)
- EThe fact that(22 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
A faster keyboard sounds appealing until I have to relearn where every letter is.
With a familiar keyboard, I can type a sentence without consciously looking for each key. Move the letters around and that muscle memory stops helping. Now I'm hunting for individual letters again. The alternative could allow faster typing once everyone had learned it, while the process of getting there still cost a great deal of time, money, and frustration.
That's the distinction the passage makes. It grants the Dvorak keyboard's eventual speed advantage, but says the costs of switching would outweigh that advantage. “Better once we're using it” doesn't automatically mean “worth switching to.”
Could we ease the transition by teaching children the new arrangement while adults kept the old one? That's a reasonable idea to investigate. But the question asks what the example illustrates, and the example explicitly gives us a situation where the total costs exceed the benefits. We need to describe that lesson, not redesign the transition.
What we’re looking for
Think about a new phone operating system. Even if it performed some tasks better, replacing a system people already know could be a hassle. The established system's widespread use can itself be a practical reason to keep it. That's the general idea to look for.
Working the answers
- A
Where did accuracy come from? The passage grants that typing would ultimately be faster, but never says it would be less accurate. The tradeoff is between that eventual benefit and the costs of switching, not between speed and accuracy.
- B
We aren't told why qwerty originally became the standard, much less why people usually choose standards. The example also gives us an alternative that would allow faster typing. Keeping an established arrangement despite a more efficient alternative doesn't show that standards are generally chosen for superior efficiency.
- C
This gets the decision to keep an established standard, but misstates the reason. The passage gives concrete costs in time and money as well as frustration; it doesn't reduce the decision to people simply disliking change. And one keyboard example doesn't establish how often people make such decisions.
- D
Frustration could be an emotional cost, but the passage doesn't put it on one side and financial considerations on the other. Money and frustration are both costs of switching. Together with the time required, they outweigh the benefits of faster typing. D invents a contest between two considerations that are working together here.
- ECorrect
Qwerty's established use means that people already know it and would incur substantial costs to replace it. That makes continuing with it the more practical choice in this example, even though the alternative offers faster typing. The answer captures how widespread use can matter without claiming that people always resist change or always pick the most efficient option.
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