Logical Reasoning

PT154 · S1 · Q18 In many families adults speak

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In many families adults speak to babies in simplified language.

Conclusion

Constantly repeating simple phrases does not provide extra help to children in learning a language.

Evidence (we know this because)

There are families in which no one speaks to babies this way, yet the children in these families master the grammatical structure of their language just as well as and as quickly as other children do.

Evaluate

There are two big problems with this argument:

The conclusion is trying to prove that "X does not help people to do Y", whereas the evidence is only going to establish that .

It's akin to this flawed argument: .

We would object to this Harvard argument and to the baby argument the same way --

This author is assuming that

The second problem with the argument is that the conclusion is about whether or not something "helps children to learn a language", whereas the evidence is about whether or not children .

The author seems to think that, But maybe repeating simple phrases is supposed to help a kid learn a language for a different reason.

Goal

Look for an answer speaking to the assumption of, .

Or look for an answer ruling out an objection, where if we negate it, it might allow us to argue that repeating simple phrases does provide extra help to children learning a language.

18.

Which one of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?

  1. Babies pay no extra attention

    Irrelevant Distinction

    If we negate this "not / no" and get, "babies do pay more attention to phrases with simple structures", does that weaken the argument? Not in any clear way. This is talking about paying more attention not being helped extra when it comes to learning the language. And the answer is just talking about any simply-structured phrase, not repeating simple phrases. Our author might agree that it's better to speak to babies with simple structures because they pay more attention, but still say that repeating these simple phrases has no learning value.

    19% picked this

  2. Speaking to babies in simplified

    Not Required

    This would strengthen the author's conclusion, if true, but it's not necessary. The author doesn't need repeating simple phrases to damage the learning process. He's only trying to prove that it doesn't help the learning process. If we negate this and get, "Speaking in simple language cannot impair their language learning", that doesn't hurt the argument. The author can respond, "Cool. I never said it impaired their learning, just that it doesn't provide any extra help to their learning."

    3% picked this

  3. Correct

    Any child who has mastered

    Why this is right

    This seems pretty strongly worded and thus might not be tempting on a first pass. Since it's conditional, it's best to ask ourselves whether the author's thinking seemed to make this move: if a child has mastered → then the child has grammatical structure learned the language Yes, the author seems to be thinking that. Her conclusion is about whether or not repeating simple phrases helps in learning a language. Her evidence was about whether or not children who hadn't had simple phrases repeated to them had mastered the grammatical structures of their language. The author thus must have been assuming a link / equivalence between those two. The author saying, "Look at these kids! No one repeated simple phrases to them, and THEY learned the language just as well and as quickly as other children do." But she didn't say they learned the language just as well/quickly. She said they mastered the grammatical structure just as well/quickly. So she's assuming, "if you mastered the grammatical structure, you learned the language." We don't usually recommend negating conditional answers, but if we negated this, it would be saying, "Hey, author -- it's possible that a child has mastered the grammatical structure of a language, but hasn't learned the language". Would that weaken? Sure, in the same sense we were discussing. We could say, "author, your evidence doesn't even seem clearly relevant. We're talking about whether or not repeating simple phrases helps a child learn a language, and you're talking about whether or not children have mastered grammatical structure. Those aren't the same."

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

    69% picked this

  4. Many linguists believe that speaking

    Out of Scope: linguists

    The argument never brings up linguists at all. The author doesn't need to assume anything about them. If we negated this answer, it would be saying, "Zero, or practically zero, linguists believe that speaking to babies in simplified language helps them learn language", and that would actually just strengthen the author's conclusion.

    2% picked this

  5. To learn a language one

    Opposite Out of Scope: vocabulary

    The author is actually acting like acquiring grammatical structure is all there is to it. Negating this answer would say, "learning a language doesn't require vocabulary in addition to grammatical structure", which would just strengthen the author's argument, since he is pointing to kids who have mastered grammar and acting like they've learned the language.

    7% picked this

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