Forestry official: Many people think

Answer choices

1. A

   Bad Conclusion Match3% picked this

   It is offered as support for the contention that the Forestry Department is not doing its job properly if it does not extinguish

   This answer correctly labels the role of our claim as support, but it's directly supporting the idea that "it's best to let small fires burn" and indirectly supporting the idea that "the Forestry Dept. is doing its job properly".

   3%
2. B

   Correct90% picked this

   It is used as evidence against the contention that the Forestry Department is not doing its job properly if it does not extinguish

   Why this is right

   This answer correctly labels the role of our claim as evidence, and it tests our understanding of the implicit rebuttal conclusion the whole argument is directed towards. Our claim directly supports the conclusion that "it's best to let small fires burn", which is rebutting the idea that "if the Forestry Department doesn't put out forest fires as quickly as possible, then it's not doing its job properly".

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

   90%
3. C

   Out of Scope: most6% picked this

   It is used to show what the consequences would be if the Forestry Department based its policies on the ideas most people have about

   We could get into a more complicated and nuanced objection to this answer, based on the fact that the author's goal in telling us about what small fires do is just to demonstrate that it's proper policy to let small fires burn. She isn't trying to rub out faces in it and be like, "SEE what you did? THIS is what happens when you let the Forestry Department go off the public's ideas of how things should work." But the quicker, easier way to know this answer is wrong is that we never even talked about ideas most people have about how the Department should do its job. The first sentence just says, "Many people think .." Many is an unspecific quantity that we can think of as "at least 5". Most is very specific, because it means more than 50% of the population.

   6%
4. D

   Out of Scope0% picked this

   It is an example used to illustrate the claim that most people believe the Forestry Department should quickly

   Out of Scope: most Illustrate vs. Counter Again, our quickest way to disqualify this answer is to just see "most people believe" and remind ourselves that the argument never talked about what most people believe. On a deeper level, our claim wasn't trying to illustrate the fact that most people believe something. It was trying to counter the thing that "many people" believe in the first sentence.

   0%
5. E

   Wrong Role1% picked this

   It is a conclusion based on the premise in the argument that it is best to let

   We're looking for premise, not conclusion. Our claim is not supported by the final claim. The Therefore keyword would never allow that. You can't possibly have Claim 2. Therefore, Claim 3 and say that 2 is a conclusion based on 3. That keyword instructs us that in the author's mind, 3 is a conclusion based on 2.

   1%