Q4

[DanielG926]

I feel like in retrospect I get why C is correct: it involves 2 parties where 1 party is being held responsible for the actions of the other because they in some way supported the actions. In the _Shelly_ case it's the government bearing responsibility for race-based covenants because it enforces them, and in the _Newspaper_ case it's the newspaper bearing responsibility for a columnist's piece because they publish the columnist. I guess A "got" me because I assumed the trucking company is bearing responsibility for the actions of a driver.

Does anyone have any advice on how to tackle these questions? I feel like I approach them on gut instinct, and I am wondering if there's a more systematic approach.

[ohthatpatrick]

I think analogy questions are consistently some of the hardest in RC. I counsel my students to consider skipping them / saving them for last.

It's easy for students to end up spending longer than average trying to answer them, only to still end up with a less-confident-than-average answer in the end.

RC questions for which the correct answer can be mapped to some line from the passage (even though the correct answer will use synonyms and different phrasings) are easier to get right because you can "see" the correspondence between the answer and the supporting text.

RC questions that "go beyond" the text (Analogy, Strengthen/Weaken, New Last Sentence) often feel looser because you're slightly less beholden to the text.

The process for these is just like that for Match the Reasoning in LR:
1. Read the applicable text and try to extract a general sense of what is going on (get rid of the topic, and just focus on generic verbs / adjectives / relationships, etc.)

2. Check out the answers seeing if you can match them to your mental model

3. Be willing to revise your mental model if the answers seem to be fishing for a different sense of matching than what you had initially considered (this almost never happens in LR, but it's fairly common in RC)

When we're extracting the general qualities, it's hard to know sometimes whether we're being too vague or too granular, so you often start a little broad and then get more specific if you need to in order to differentiate between the surviving answers.

When I re-read the snippet of the 2nd paragraph and try to put the "attribution of responsibility" into my own words, I see that we're saying in a private contract, Party 1 and Party 2 agree to something. If Party 2 fails to hold up its end of the contract, then Party 1 can go to the state and say "Hey, force Party 2 to comply".

Because the state might be responsible for enforcing the language of the contract, the court attributes responsibility to the state.

FUZZY ARCHETYPE:
some two-party interaction, where one of those parties might seek out a THIRD party to back them up, and we end up saying that the THIRD party is (also) responsible.

(A) I don't see a third party
(B) I don't see a third party
(C) I don't see a third party
(D) I don't see a third party
(E) I don't see a third party

So maybe the way I've construed it is limiting. The way the answers are being presented, the only one that invokes SOME OTHER party is (C).

(A) If a company fails ..., then that company can be responsible
(B) If an individual .., then that individual can be responsible
(D) If a person ..., then that person can be responsible
(E) If a company ... , then that company is responsible.

(C) is the only one saying
If a columnist writes a certain article, then the columnist AND SOME OTHER PARTY (the newspaper) can be held responsible.

This is a far cry from the granular idea of "if one of the two parties in an agreement can turn to a third party to back them up / enforce it, then that third party is also responsible".

It's just the best available answer, since it involves some bigger background entity sharing the responsibility for what a specific individual might do.

Hope this helps.