PrepTest 150, Section 1, Question 17

Working the answers

• A
  Correct

  A work written to reward a particular protocol fits neatly with B's description of a central example. A work that wasn't written that way may fit the genre less clearly. It makes sense, then, that some such works would be borderline cases. The word sometimes matters: this doesn't claim that every work lacking that design must be borderline, or that it cannot belong to the genre at all.

• B

  B explains ways of reading and making sense of a text. That doesn't establish that readers' expectations are inessential to genre classification. An approach to reading is not simply a prediction of what will happen next, and B never dismisses the role of expectations as this choice does.

• C

  This favors the approach B finds inadequate. The author proposes reading protocols as a more fruitful basis than thematic similarities.

• D

  B defines protocols partly through how readers respond to sentences and make them make sense. We cannot conclude that interpreting a sentence is independent of genre. The claim is not supported merely because the sentence is considered individually.

• E

  B doesn't require every member of a genre to share the themes and content of its central examples. That imports the content-based rule the author moves away from.