PrepTest 137, Section 1, Question 17
Passage A Until recently, conservationists were often complacent(466 more words not shown)
Passage A(224 more words not shown)
Passage B(250 more words not shown)
The author of passage B(32 more words not shown)
- AIt correctly characterizes(7 more words not shown)
- BIt contradicts a(9 more words not shown)
- CIt helps to(10 more words not shown)
- DIt introduces an(4 more words not shown)
- EIt conflates physical(7 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
Read natural through B's distinction between nature itself and our preferred version of it. A says the Everglades appears wild and natural to the untrained eye, then explains how introduced plants are degrading it. That contrast treats the older, native arrangement as the genuinely natural one.
What we’re looking for
B would push back: a changed ecosystem is still nature. Calling it less natural because it no longer has the preferred native composition imports a human ideal into what sounds like a description of the physical world. That is the objection we need to recognize, even if the answer expresses it abstractly.
Working the answers
- A
This invokes pristine versus disturbed habitats, the earlier distinction discussed in A. B doesn't endorse that distinction as the meaning of natural here; its concern is the human standard used to judge the changed ecosystem.
- B
B disputes A's framing, but doesn't identify an internal contradiction between two definitions of nature within A. Disagreement between the writers isn't the same as A contradicting itself.
- C
A says “wild and natural,” using the terms together. It isn't explaining how something can be wild yet not natural, or defining a difference between those words.
- D
B's objection isn't that A has introduced an unusual new definition. It is that A relies on a preferred image of what nature ought to be, then treats that preference as an ecological distinction.
- ECorrect
Conflates means treats two different things as though they were the same. Here those things are physical nature—the ecosystem that exists—and an ideal of nature, such as an ecosystem retaining its native composition. B's opening directly challenges that substitution.
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