PrepTest 157, Section 1, Question 7
Grammarians of the prescriptive school take it as(452 more words not shown)
The author's defense of the(24 more words not shown)
- AA study showed(20 more words not shown)
- BA study found(21 more words not shown)
- CA cross-cultural study(23 more words not shown)
- DA study showed(28 more words not shown)
- EA report demonstrated(14 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
The fourth and fifth sentences of the final paragraph say linguistic change is unlike physics because people make choices and can be persuaded. To strengthen that defense, show a connection between efforts to teach a usage and what people subsequently do. The useful evidence would concern influence, not just the fact that communities have rules.
Working the answers
- A
Independent communities arriving at similar rules doesn't show that prescription changes their behavior. If anything, convergence without intervention could fit the idea that common forces guide language on their own.
- BCorrect
Students exposed to more grammar instruction are more likely to follow the taught rules throughout life. That connects a deliberate effort to influence usage with lasting behavior of the kind the author says is possible. A correlation isn't conclusive proof of causation, but it supports the defense more directly than the other findings.
- C
A similar range of variation across different education systems doesn't tell us whether particular rules were adopted because people were persuaded. The degree of variation is not the same measurement as the influence of instruction.
- D
This concerns how easily students reach agreement when left to make their own rules. It doesn't show that prescribed instruction persuades them to adopt a given usage; the group with less instruction reaches agreement more readily.
- E
Uniformity within communities and differences between them describe a pattern of usage. Without evidence of an intervention or persuasion, that pattern doesn't establish the mechanism the author is defending.
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