The stem points at one claim, not at the whole text
Based on the texts, how would the author of Text 2 most likely respond to the claim in bold in Text 1? Everything turns on the words the claim in bold. Text 1 usually makes several statements; only one of them is on trial. A choice that answers a different sentence of Text 1 is wrong no matter how faithfully it represents Text 2's opinions.
Two conditions, both required. The correct choice must (1) say something Text 2 actually supports, and (2) be a response to that claim. Most wrong answers satisfy exactly one of the two.
Học sinh hay đọc Text 2 rồi chọn phương án nào tóm tắt Text 2 hay nhất. Sai — đề không hỏi Text 2 nói gì, đề hỏi Text 2 đáp lại một câu cụ thể ra sao. Trước khi nhìn bốn phương án, tự viết một dòng: “B sẽ nói …, vì trong Text 2 có câu …”. Không điền được vế “vì” thì chưa đọc xong Text 2.
Four response shapes
- Reject, with a reason. The claim is false, and here is what Text 2 has instead.
- Accept the fact, reassign the cause. The observation stands; the explanation does not.
- Accept, but call it incomplete. True as far as it goes; here is what it leaves out.
- Accept, but limit the scope. True in these conditions, not in general.
Shapes 2, 3 and 4 all begin with a concession. That is why so many correct answers open with by accepting, by granting, or by agreeing that… while arguing that….
Text 1
Songbirds raised in isolation, never having heard an adult of their
species, still produce a vocalization that a trained listener can assign to the right species. The
result has been repeated across sparrows, finches, and warblers. The template must
therefore be innate, and learning adds only ornament to a pattern the bird already carries.
Text 2
Isolate song is recognizable the way a hummed tune is recognizable:
the coarse shape survives, the fine structure does not. Birds raised without a tutor produce
syllables in the wrong order and at unstable pitch, and females ignore them. What survives isolation
is a rough scaffold, not the song.
How would the author of Text 2 most likely respond to the claim in bold in Text 1?
- By agreeing that isolate song shows the template to be innate.
- By arguing that what isolation preserves is too coarse to count as the song itself, so learning does more than ornament.
- By denying that isolated birds produce any vocalization at all.
- By pointing out that songbirds do not learn from tutors.
Prediction first: B would say the isolate song is only a scaffold, because Text 2 says syllables come in the wrong order and females ignore them. That is shape 1. (C) contradicts a fact Text 2 concedes in its first sentence; (D) contradicts Text 2's own reference to tutors. Answer (B).
Text 1
Between the wars, several European cities built housing estates on
cheap land at the edge of the city, and residents moved from crowded tenements into flats with
light and running water. Within two decades many of those estates had the worst health
outcomes in their cities, which shows that the modernist plan itself was unsound.
Text 2
The estates were finished before their tram lines were. Clinics,
shops, and schools arrived years late or never, and rents were set for households with a wage
earner in the centre of town. Nothing in the site plans required any of that; it followed from
what was funded first.
How would the author of Text 2 most likely respond to the claim in bold in Text 1?
- By accepting the health outcomes but attributing them to what was left unbuilt rather than to the design.
- By denying that health outcomes on the estates were poor.
- By agreeing that modernist planning was unsound and adding a further example.
- By arguing that residents preferred the tenements they had left.
Shape 2: the fact is untouched, the cause is moved. Nothing in the site plans required any of that is the sentence that does the work. (B) contradicts a premise Text 2 never disputes; (C) reverses Text 2's conclusion; (D) states something neither text says. Answer (A).
Text 1
A district assigned its primary schools at random either to a new
reading programme or to the existing curriculum, and after two years the schools using the
programme scored higher. The design rules out the possibility that stronger schools simply chose
it. Because the trial was randomized, its result can be expected to hold wherever the
programme is adopted.
Text 2
Randomization protects a comparison inside the population that was
randomized. It says nothing about a different population. The district in the trial had small
classes, a stable teaching staff, and a coordinator visiting each school weekly. Whether the
programme works without those conditions is a question the trial did not ask.
How would the author of Text 2 most likely respond to the claim in bold in Text 1?
- By agreeing that randomization guarantees the result will generalize.
- By claiming that the higher scores were an artefact of the way reading was measured.
- By arguing that schools in the trial chose the programme for themselves.
- By arguing that the design supports the comparison it made but not the extension to other settings.
Shape 4. Text 2's first two sentences concede the internal comparison and refuse the external one. (A) is the claim itself. (B) attacks measurement, which Text 2 never mentions. (C) contradicts Text 1's design and Text 2's silence. Answer (D).
Where the wrong answers come from
- Right text, wrong target. A response Text 2 would give to a different sentence of Text 1.
- True but not a response. A detail Text 2 genuinely contains, which answers nothing.
- Overshoot. More hostile, or more agreeable, than Text 2's hedges allow.
- Recycled Text 1. A sentence lifted from Text 1 and offered as Text 2's reply.
Text 1
Estimates of how many languages will still be spoken in a century
vary, but every one of them is a steep decline. The decisive factor is the size of the
speaker community: below a few thousand speakers a language cannot survive.
Text 2
Community size predicts poorly. Icelandic has held on with a few
hundred thousand speakers while languages with far more have been abandoned in two generations.
What separates them is whether the language holds a domain of daily use that another language does
not already occupy — a school, a market, a court.
How would the author of Text 2 most likely respond to the claim in bold in Text 1?
- By agreeing that a language below a few thousand speakers cannot survive.
- By observing that Icelandic has a few hundred thousand speakers.
- By arguing that survival depends on holding a domain of daily use rather than on the number of speakers.
- By arguing that estimates of language loss are exaggerated.
(B) is factory 2 in its purest form: the sentence is in Text 2, and it answers nothing on its own. (D) is factory 1 — a reply to the first sentence of Text 1, not to the claim. Answer (C).
Phương án “đúng nhưng không trả lời” là nhiễu ăn điểm nhiều nhất ở dạng này, vì học sinh kiểm tra theo cách sai: dò xem câu đó có nằm trong Text 2 không, thấy có thì khoanh. Kiểm đúng phải là hai bước — có trong Text 2 và đáp lại đúng ý in đậm. Chỉ một bước là hỏng.
Text 1
The manuscript's marginal notes are in a hand different from the main
text, and they gloss difficult words in the vernacular. They are the work of a later reader,
added long after the book was copied.
Text 2
The gloss hand appears in the main text as well, correcting two
omissions that only someone working from the exemplar could have caught. The ink matches. On this
evidence the glosses were added in the scriptorium, most likely by the corrector, while the book was
still in production.
How would the author of Text 2 most likely respond to the claim in bold in Text 1?
- By dismissing the claim as an obvious error unworthy of discussion.
- By disagreeing and citing evidence that places the glosses inside the original production of the book.
- By agreeing that the glosses were added by a later reader.
- By arguing that the marginal notes are not glosses at all.
(A) and (B) point the same way; only the temperature differs, and Text 2 argues rather than sneers. (D) contradicts Text 2's own word glosses. Answer (B).
Trên đề thật, Text 2 gần như không bao giờ “bác bỏ thẳng thừng” hay “chế nhạo”. Phương án chứa dismiss, ridicule, reject outright thường sai không phải vì sai hướng mà vì sai nhiệt độ. Khi hai phương án cùng hướng, chọn cái ôn hoà hơn, trừ khi Text 2 dùng đúng chữ mạnh đó.
Sometimes B agrees
Nothing in the stem promises a rebuttal. A pair can be built so that Text 2 supplies the mechanism Text 1 asserted without explaining, and then the correct answer opens with by agreeing.
Text 1
Guidance on concussion once made complete rest the default: a dark
room, no reading, no screens, until symptoms cleared. Any activity undertaken while symptoms
persist risks extending the recovery.
Text 2
Patients kept in complete rest for more than two days report symptoms
for longer than patients who resume light activity early. Light activity means walking and gentle
cycling, kept below the level that makes symptoms worse. That threshold matters: exercise that
provokes symptoms does delay recovery, which is why the old advice was not simply wrong.
How would the author of Text 2 most likely respond to the claim in bold in Text 1?
- By agreeing without qualification and recommending complete rest.
- By accepting that symptom-provoking activity delays recovery while denying that the point extends to activity kept below that threshold.
- By denying that activity has any effect on recovery time.
- By arguing that complete rest shortens recovery in every case.
Text 2 endorses half the claim in so many words — exercise that provokes symptoms does delay recovery — and rejects the word any. (A) and (D) side with the old guidance Text 2 is correcting; (C) contradicts the concession. Answer (B).
Text 1
Coffee reached Europe through Ottoman ports, and the first London
coffeehouses opened in the 1650s. Within a generation they were places where merchants read
newsletters and settled accounts. The coffeehouse mattered because coffee itself sharpened
attention, replacing the mild drunkenness of a beer-drinking city.
Text 2
What the coffeehouse offered that the tavern did not was a table
anyone could join for a penny and a stock of newspapers paid for by the house. Insurance, shipping,
and share dealing grew up in particular rooms. The drink was the price of entry, not the mechanism.
How would the author of Text 2 most likely respond to the claim in bold in Text 1?
- By agreeing that the physiological effect of coffee explains the coffeehouse's importance.
- By denying that the first London coffeehouses opened in the 1650s.
- By arguing that the coffeehouse mattered because of the access and information it organized rather than because of the drink's effect.
- By pointing out that taverns also supplied newspapers.
The drink was the price of entry, not the mechanism is a direct answer to the bold claim. (B) answers a different sentence of Text 1; (D) contradicts Text 2's own contrast with the tavern. Answer (C).
Đừng mặc định Text 2 phải phản đối. Có cặp bài mà Text 2 chỉ đang cung cấp cơ chế cho điều Text 1 khẳng định suông. Cứ loại sạch phương án “by agreeing” ngay từ đầu là tự bỏ mất đáp án ở đúng những câu dễ ăn điểm nhất.
Ba trong bốn kiểu trên bắt đầu bằng một câu nhượng bộ, nên phương án đúng rất hay mở bằng by accepting, by granting, by agreeing that… while arguing that…. Ngược lại, phương án phủ nhận sạch trơn một dữ kiện mà Text 2 vừa thừa nhận thì loại được ngay, không cần đọc hết.
The routine, under time pressure
Four steps, in this order. (1) Read the bold claim alone and say it back in six words. (2) Read Text 2 and find the one sentence that touches it. (3) Write the prediction: B would say … because …. (4) Only now open the choices, and keep the one your prediction matches.