Q7 - Generations of European-history students

[griswald]

Can anyone explain why (B) is wrong? The stimulus seemed to simply say that the causes for the war were already in motion and inevitable by the time the assassination occurred.

[jwms]

I struggled on this one a bit, too.

I suspect the problem with (B) has to do with it mentioning 'the course of history up to that point could not have been altered'. That's not really mentioned in the stimulus. The fact that the war was inevitable was fundamental in the stimulus, but it didn't mention anything about altering history. That's making an additional (and unnecessary) leap.

(C), on the other hand, notes that there's more nuance to 'cause'; this gets at the whole 'without some qualification, this teaching is bound to mislead' point in the stimulus. It also reiterates the line in the stimulus that there 'were deeper causes of the war'.

Somewhat of a tricky question for the beginning of a section.

[rinagoldfield]

Main point LR questions are often trickier than they appear. One key thing to remember about them is that you are looking for the argument’s conclusion. In this sense, these questions are different than main point RC questions, since your task is not to synthesize the whole stimulus but to hone in on the author’s conclusion as closely as possible.

Tempting wrong answer choices will offer inferences or premises; try to stay as close to the language of the conclusion as the answer choices allow.

Here, the conclusion is “there were deeper causes of the war, whereas the assassination was a cause only in the trivial sense.”

This pretty well matches (C), which essentially rewords this idea. I like what jwms wrote about (C), that it adds nuance to the idea of cause.

(B) does not address the trivial nature of the assassination “cause.” It additionally takes the author’s idea of inevitability too far, suggesting that history could not have been altered. (B) is thus too extreme and misses a key component of the author’s conclusion.

(A) is too extreme – it says the assassination was NOT a cause.

(D) negates the author’s logic.

(E) reverses the author’s emphasis, suggesting that the assassination was more important than the prevailing conditions.

Best,
Rina

[asafezrati]

Under timed conditions I was looking for "without some qualification this teaching is misleading." I eventually chose C because it was the closest thing.
It seems that the following explanation (and the correct answer choice) is a premise which explains why the stuff that being taught in class is misleading.

Can you clear up this point?

[rinagoldfield]

Asafezrati, I agree that you could also interpret "Without some qualification, however, this teaching is bound to mislead" as the conclusion. Since no answer choice states anything close to that, I'm glad you were able to flexibly adapt to the given choices. I think this is a good example of why it's important not to over-predict answers. (C) is the only choice that is even stated in the passage, so it must be correct.

[JerryG500]

Can someone please explain why D is incorrect? It looks like the contrapositive of the stimulus.

Stimulus: war happen > treaties and military force
D: Less military force > war may not happen

Thanks
Jerry