Q13 - Some of the politicians who strongly

[mshinners]

Question Type:
Inference (Must Be True)

Stimulus Breakdown:
Some of the people who supported one free trade agreement won't publicly support extending it.

Answer Anticipation:
Since this stimulus really only has one idea, I'm expecting the correct answer to be a rephrasing of what was already said.

Correct answer:
(D)

Answer choice analysis:
(A) Illegal negation/out of scope. The stimulus doesn't provide any information about people who do publicly support the extension.

(B) Out of scope. The stimulus doesn't provide any information about people who do publicly support the extension. (I'd rephrase this into a "some" statement - Some who publicly support the extension didn't support the initial deal. This is essentially the same as (A).)

(C) Term shift. The stimulus talks about public support, not actual support. Additionally, these politicians' initial position could have been free trade is good as long as it's limited to few countries.

(D) Rephrase time - Some politicians who supported the initial deal don't publicly support the extension. That's a rephrase of the stimulus, so it's the answer.

(E) Term shift. The stimulus states that some of these politicians don't publicly suppor the extension, but that's much different than publicly opposing. They could all quietly oppose it.

Takeaway/Pattern:
Two things:
1) Rephrase "not all" statements into "some don't" statements.
2) In Inference questions, an answer that rephrases the stimulus is AOK. An Inference doesn't have to make a jump; it only has to be something that can be said to be true. A restatement qualifies.

#officialexplanation

[kyuya]

I think this question could be drawn out conditionally if you want but I found that it was a bit more of a hassle that way considering how short the stimulus is.

The tricky thing about this question is threefold:

1.) the phrase "support publicly"
2.) dealing with past tense
3.) Making proper inferences with nuanced language

Essentially, what do these few sentences really tell us, without a doubt (hence, MBT).

(A) We don't know anything about politicians who do support extending trade to Latin American countries. We simply do not have the information; we can only draw conclusions about the group that is mentioned in this stimulus. Because it is entirely possible this could be false, we can eliminate it.

(B) Again, much like (A), we don't know. We know nothing about the group of people that supports trade to Latin Americans!

(C) This one is enticing. We may be temped to conclude, "ah they no longer support the idea of free trade being extended to Latin American countries! Therefore, they changed their position on free trade!"

But as alluded to above, the key phrase here is "support publicly". With that, it is entirely possible that they have NOT changed their position. For example, consider a politician who once supported gay marriage, but as he decides to run for president, he no longer publicly states his support for it. Does this preclude him from supporting gay marriage? Of course not. Lack of public support is not synonymous with NO support, and is consistent with still holding that belief.

(D) This is correct. This seems so blatantly obvious that it might throw people off (I know it did for me.. I was skeptical when I chose this one). However, we can draw this conclusion comfortably. Since the stimulus tells us that some no longer publicly support trade to Latin American countries, we can say that not all politicians publicly support extending free trade there. PUBLICLY SUPPORT, once again, is key here for getting the right answer. Again, we cannot draw inferences about whether their position on the matter has in fact changed.

(E) Again plays off the language of publicly support. Lack of public support certainly does not mean you have stopped supporting something, and to say you now OPPOSE that thing is a faulty inference.