Gabriella: By raising interest rates

Answer choices

1. A

   Unsupported Agree Position1% picked this

   the economic slowdown in the country has caused people to

   We can't derive support for affirming this answer from either speaker. Speaker 1 thought spending less caused the economic slowdown (this answer says the reverse). Speaker 2 thought the global slowdown caused this country's economic slowdown.

   1%
2. B

   Unsupported Disagree Position3% picked this

   the economy of the country is tied to the economies of

   Person 2 clearly agrees with this answer, but we have no support that Person 1 disagrees. The Disagree position is pretty harsh: this country's economy is not tied to the economies of any other countries. Person 1 doesn't think international economic interdependence is what caused this recent slowdown, but she still might agree that international economic interdependence exists for this country.

   3%
3. C

   Unsupported Disagree Position1% picked this

   raising interest rates caused a significant decrease

   Person 1 would plausibly agree with this (although this says significant decrease, which goes a little farther than Person 1 went), but we can't support that Person 2 thinks that "raising interest rates did not cause a significant decrease in borrowing". We know that Person 2 thinks "raising interest rates did not cause the economy's slowdown", but we can't get more specific than that.

   1%
4. D

   Correct96% picked this

   raising interest rates caused the country’s economy

   Why this is right

   Gabriella implicitly agrees with this, because she lays out a causal chain that starts from the the government's action to raise rates and ends with the economic slowdown. By raising rates, the govt. induced less borrowing and therefore less spending, thereby slowing the economy. Ivan implicitly disagrees with this because he says "the government's action (of raising interest rates) did not cause the economy's slowdown."

   Skill tested: Agree/Disagree · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

   96%
5. E

   Unsupported Disagree Position0% picked this

   the global economy has

   We know Ivan agrees with this, but we have no support from Gabriella's claims that she believes "the global economy has not slowed".

   0%