IN HIS NEW BIOGRAPHY, AUTHOR MARTINGRIER SEES ABRAHAM LINCOLN AS A...

40. In his new biography, author Martin

Grier sees Abraham Lincoln as a

wiches to give discretionary raises

thoughtful person who nevertheless

only to employees who demonstrate a

knew instinctively that only when its

strong commitment to their jobs and

people obey and revere the law can a

have worked at SubStop for more

democracy flourish.

than six months. However, a state

labor law requires SubStop to

(A)

only when its people obey and

provide annual cost-of-living raises to

revere the law can a democracy

all employees who have been continu-

flourish

ously employed for at least six

(B)

democracies flourish when laws

months. Last year, SubStop complied

are obeyed and revered only by

fully with its own policy and with the

their people

state’s labor laws. Yet, 2—and only

(C)

only when the law is obeyed

2—of SubStop Sandwiches’ 8 employ-

and revered by its people can a

ees received any wage raise whatso-

democracy flourish

ever last year.

(D) a democracy can flourish only

If the information provided is true,

when its people obey and revere

which of the following must on the

the law

(E)

only when a democracy flour-

basis of it also be true about SubStop

ishes can its people obey and

last year?

revere the law

(A)

Two of its employees demon-

strated a strong commitment to

their jobs.

(B)

None of its employees received

a discretionary raise.

(C)

Six of its employees failed to

demonstrate a strong commit-

ment to their jobs.

(D) Two of its employees worked at

SubStop continuously for at

least six months.

(E)

It claimed to provide wage raises

in compliance with the state’s

labor law but in fact did not.

answers practice test 5

. . . .

...

ANSWER KEYS AND EXPLANATIONS

See Appendix B for score conversion tables to determine your score. Be sure to keep a tally of

correct and incorrect answers for each test section.

Analysis of an Issue—Evaluation and Scoring

Evaluate your Issue-Analysis essay on a scale of 1 to 6 (6 being the highest score) according to

the following five criteria:

Does your essay develop a position on the issue through the use of incisive reasons

and persuasive examples?

Are your essay’s ideas conveyed clearly and articulately?

Does your essay maintain proper focus on the issue and is it well organized?

Does your essay demonstrate proficiency, fluency, and maturity in its use of sen-

tence structure, vocabulary, and idiom?

Does your essay demonstrate command of the elements of Standard Written

English, including grammar, word usage, spelling, and punctuation?

586

PART VI: Five Practice Tests

Analysis of an Argument—Evaluation and Scoring

Evaluate your Argument-Analysis essay on a scale of 1 to 6 (6 being the highest score)

according to the following five criteria:

Does your essay identify the key features of the argument and analyze each one in

a thoughtful manner?

Does your essay support each point of its critique with insightful reasons and

examples?

Does your essay develop its ideas in a clear, organized manner, with appropriate

transitions to help connect ideas?

Does your essay demonstrate command of the elements of Standard Written En-

glish, including grammar, word usage, spelling, and punctuation?

To help you evaluate your essay in terms of criteria 1 and 2, the following series of questions

serve to identify the Argument’s six distinct problems. The last three questions all involve the

survey, and so it might be appropriate to address all three in the same paragraph of the essay.

To earn a score of 4 or higher, your essay should identify at least three of the six problems and,

for each one, provide at least one example or counterexample that supports your critique.

(Your examples need not be the same as the ones below.) Identifying and discussing at least

four of the problems would help earn you an even higher score.

•

Does the argument confuse cause-and-effect with mere temporal (time) sequence?

(Pilfering might usually go unnoticed by other employees, who in any event often

look the other way whenever they do observe it; if so, the decline in pilfering cannot

be attributed to the honor code.)

•

Does the argument assume that past conditions affecting the reported incidence of

pilfering have remained unchanged? (Such conditions include the number of

MegaCorp employees and the overall integrity of those employees; to the extent

such conditions have changed over the five-year period, the reported decrease in

pilfering might not be attributable to the honor code.)

•

Are MegaCorp employees representative of “all businesses”? (Perhaps under an

honor system, MegaCorp employees are less likely to either pilfer or report pilfering

than the typical employee, for whatever reason.)

•

Is the company-wide survey on which the recommendation depends potentially

biased and therefore not credible? (The survey results are meaningful only to the

extent that the people surveyed responded honestly, which is doubtful.)

•

Does the recommendation rely on a potentially unrepresentative statistical sample?

(The author fails to assure us that the survey’s respondents are representative of all

MegaCorp employees.)

•

Are the survey responses a reliable indicator about the future behavior of the

Quantitative Section