Q7

[MeghanC389]

Would love further explanation on answer choice B and why it is correct. Is it in lines 6-7? Thanks!!

[andrewgong01]

That's how I proved "B" "clog rivers with silt", which we can then infer that it is harder to sail on a river now. However, I relied more on elimination to get to "B" :

A) Fake Comparison - We never had a comparison about plants and humans; we only do know about the medicinal benefits of the rainforests

C) Fake comparison in comparing what we have more of. Also, the second to last line, although does not fully prove this, if anything would further lead us to not choose "C" since it says that plantation makes up just 3% of the world's forests area. Of course, if there are like 100 different types of forest where each occupy about 1% of the world's area then this would be an issue for "C" hence i think it is safer to rule out C on the fake comparison grounds since we never had a direct comparison between commercial plantations and TYPES of forests

D) Fake comparison. We only know that tropical places have a lot of biodiversity buy we never had a comparison to non-tropical forests

E) "Rarely" could be a degree issue as that requires a pretty high level of proof that all the production in commercial forests are for exports. More importantly, the passage never talked much about consumption or exports at all, which makes this unlikley.

Choices A,C,D all seemed to have a fake comparison issue.
E has degree issues and B has the most gentle language

[KelliW299]

Can a teacher chime in on this one please

[ohthatpatrick]

I think Andrew nailed it.

On a first pass, if you don't immediately think that (A) and (B) are the most likely answers, then you really want to pay more attention to STRONG/COMPARATIVE language.

C, D, and E still MIGHT be correct, if we can find adequate support, but they "sound" like wrong answers, whereas A and B sound like correct answers.

I know where to look for (A), because we talked about diseases/medications in the 3rd paragraph. When I revisit 30-35, there's no evidence at all of plants and humans having the same diseases.

It's just saying that we might be able to use plants (or specifically chemicals within them) to design medications for humans.

I might not know immediately where to look for (B), which is why some posters were saying they only came around to it through elimination. But, yes, the support is line 6-7.

If you have a clogged river, that sounds like a negative for water-based transportation.

This correct answer has the familiar feel of a correct answer on an Inference question. You restate a fact in upside-down terms.

We learned that "when forests are there, they help to prevent the clogging of rivers",
and this answer is testing "so if forests weren't there, there would be more clogging of rivers".

And then of course the other hallmark of a typical correct answer on an Inference question is that they find some obnoxious way of rephrasing something with synonyms or weird syntax.

So "there would be more clogging of rivers" is cryptically alluded to with "there would be negative effects on water-based transportation".