Reading Comprehension

PT128 · S4 · P1 · Q3 New Zealand's Wool Growers

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The 50 million sheep of New Zealand outnumber its people 13 to 1, the highest such ratio in the world.

Topic

The wool industry in New Zealand

Framework

Problem/Solution

Main Point

Although the wool industry in NZ has been suffering since 1950, based on the rise of synthetic wool, it could improve its productivity by adopting the practices of the country's leading wool growers.

Summary

P1 - Intro / Description of Problem

After telling us about the glory days for NZ wool in the 1950's, we get a Purpose Pivot (but, yet, however, recently). It tells us about a drastic decline in profitability, so it looks like a good Framework could be Problem / Solution. The rest of the paragraph continues to unpack the problem.

P2 - Big Picture Solution

In this paragraph, the author rejects one Solution (raising wool prices) and says instead that we need to improve productivity, and "this goal could readily be achieved if" the NZ wool industry were to adopt the best practices of the leading wool growers.

P3 - Obstacle to Solution

This paragraph essentially continues its contention that better management could do the trick. A tension is introduced between "professional operations" (who are sympathetic to better management practices) and "family farmers" (who care more about lifestyle than maximal efficiency).

P4 - Specific Recommendation (start a genetic research company)

The author isn't talking about gene splicing, but rather just being more Darwinian by finding the superior sheep and keeping them as breeding stock.

3.

According to the passage, which one of the following is true of New Zealand's wool industry?

  1. lt supports a strong carpet

    Out of Scope: strong carpet industry

    Carpets are brought up only once, in the middle of the 1st paragraph, as an offhand remark that NZ specializes in a type of wool that gets used in carpets. But we don't know if their is a strong carpet industry in NZ. They might just export their carpet-wool to other countries, where the strong carpet industries are located.

    10% picked this

  2. It is overseen by a

    Out of Scope: overseen by board

    The passage never discusses a board that oversees the NZ wool industry. We can quickly Ctrl-F "board" and we find nothing.

    2% picked this

  3. It has recently begun to

    Unsupported: recently begun

    This is almost supported by the line reference to industry that we found in the 4th paragraph. In the first sentence of the 4th, the author is saying "to increase productivity, let's establish a genetic research company. this would represent a shift in spending away from industry efforts to improve the efficiency of wool processing That sentence implies that wool industry is currently spending money on efforts to research more efficient wool-processing techniques. But it never said that this type of spending recently begun. It might have begun decades ago. If we were doing a "most supported" question and this was the most supportable answer, we'd take it. But the correct answer is explicitly there in the passage.

    9% picked this

  4. It has followed a pattern

    Unsupported: similar growth pattern

    The only time the cotton industry is mentioned (beginning of 3rd paragraph), the author is saying, "I think that the wool industry could possibly do something similar", not "the wool industry has performed similarly to the cotton industry".

    3% picked this

  5. Correct

    It is the largest producer

    Why this is right

    This is said in the 4th sentence of the passage: New Zealand is 2nd to Australia, when it comes to total wool production, but #1 in the world when it comes to strong wool production ... the world's largest producer of "strong wool"

    Skill tested: Locate Detail · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.

    77% picked this

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