PrepTest 154, Section 2, Question 25
Babson: The idea of charging people a dollar(84 more words not shown)
The dialogue provides the most(11 more words not shown)
- Apeople will routinely(14 more words not shown)
- Bpeople in countries(27 more words not shown)
- Cit is possible(27 more words not shown)
- Dpeople's attitudes toward(27 more words not shown)
- Emost people are(21 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
A really useful article could be worth a dollar. But will people actually pay it when so much online writing is free?
Babson thinks quality will make this approach succeed. People tip more than a dollar for good service, so a dollar for a good article shouldn't seem like much.
I can see the comparison, but the situation differs. Adding a tip after a restaurant has already taken your card can feel different from pulling out the card and entering payment details just to read one article. The obstacle needn't be the size of the payment alone.
Cortez raises a related concern about custom. People usually tip in settings where tipping is expected. Paying for individual online articles isn't currently such a practice, and Cortez takes that as a bad sign for the proposed business model.
What we’re looking for
For the disagreement question, Babson is optimistic about success if the writing is good; Cortez challenges the reason for that optimism. Keep the strength of the response straight. Calling the lack of a custom a bad sign isn't the same as saying no one could ever be persuaded to pay a dollar.
Working the answers
- A
They don't disagree that people routinely pay when custom supports doing so. Babson uses tipping as the example, and Cortez explains tipping by pointing to that custom. The disagreement concerns extending the example to payments that aren't customary.
- B
Neither speaker compares countries with tipping customs against countries without them to predict which people would pay for articles. The important contrast is between two practices: customary tipping and the proposed individual article payments. B substitutes a country comparison for that difference.
- C
This is tempting because it concerns people paying for articles without an established custom. But it only says some people could pay. Babson would accept that, while Cortez needn't deny it.
A few willing buyers could exist even if the business model were unlikely to succeed. Cortez's warning that the lack of custom is a bad sign doesn't establish the much stronger position that it is impossible to write an article anyone would buy. We need opposing commitments, not an answer one speaker merely sounds less enthusiastic about.
- DCorrect
Babson treats people's willingness to tip for quality service as support for expecting quality articles to succeed at a dollar each. Cortez challenges that inference: willingness to tip reflects an existing custom that individual article purchases lack. Their disagreement is over what the tipping behavior suggests about the proposed plan's prospects.
- E
'Novel' here means new. Babson acknowledges that the plan is novel, and Cortez points out that people don't currently pay this way. They can agree that the practice is new while disagreeing about whether quality and tipping behavior give us reason to expect it to succeed.
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