PrepTest 154, Section 1, Question 7
Mark: Advances in technology have caused the decline(78 more words not shown)
Mark and Fatuma disagree over(8 more words not shown)
- AReaders are abandoning(20 more words not shown)
- BNewspaper articles are(2 more words not shown)
- CNews articles on(6 more words not shown)
- DNewspaper writing is(14 more words not shown)
- ENo print newspaper(14 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
I can see why speed would matter. An online article can report an event as it happens; a printed paper has to be produced and delivered. Mark thinks that difference explains readers leaving newspapers.
Is speed the whole explanation? We could also wonder about cost or the convenience of reading on a phone. Those are possible questions we bring to Mark's argument. Fatuma has her own objection: newspaper articles take too long to get to the point.
She isn't denying that newspapers are losing readers to the Internet. She disputes Mark's explanation for that loss. He points to the speed made possible by technology; she points to the way newspapers write their articles. Her phrase “not the fault of technology” rejects the proposed cause. We don't need to turn the discussion into a moral judgment about whether technology is good or bad.
What we’re looking for
The disagreement should therefore be about why readers are switching. We need a claim Mark accepts and Fatuma rejects. Different subject matter by itself isn't enough: if one speaker discusses article length and the other says nothing about length, we don't yet have a disagreement on that detail.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
Mark attributes the shift to how quickly news can appear online. Fatuma rejects that technological explanation and instead blames long, less direct newspaper writing. Both address the cause of readers' move to the Internet, and they take opposing positions on whether speed explains it.
- B
Fatuma thinks newspaper articles are too long. Mark never says they are an appropriate length. He could agree that they are long and still think speed is what drives readers away. We know Fatuma's answer here, but we don't know Mark's.
- C
Fatuma praises online articles for getting to the point. Mark discusses how soon they can appear, which is a different feature. Publishing an article quickly doesn't tell us whether its writing is concise. Mark gives us no position to set against Fatuma's.
- D
This restates Fatuma's criticism of newspaper conventions. Mark doesn't evaluate those conventions. His explanation of declining sales doesn't establish that he thinks every newspaper convention helps readers understand the news. Again, we have only one speaker's position.
- E
Mark does say print newspapers can't match the Internet's speed. But Fatuma doesn't deny the speed difference. She could accept that online news appears sooner while denying that this is why readers prefer it. Distinguish the existence of a difference from the claim that the difference causes people's behavior. Their disagreement concerns the latter.
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