#5 - Peter: Unlike in the past, most children’s stories

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Point at Issue. The correct answer choice is (D)

This stimulus contains two mini-arguments. Peter argues that children’s stories should have immoral characters so that children learn the consequences of being bad. He is concerned that today’s children’s stories do not contain clearly immoral characters. Yoko disagrees, arguing that modern stories do have clearly immoral character, but they are no longer frightening characters. She states that this is an improvement on past children’s stories.

Point at Issue questions ask us to determine where the two speakers disagree. They are great opportunities for prephrasing, the information in the stimulus should allow you to determine the basic fact at issue. They are part of the prove family of questions, so the answer choice must be completely supported by the information in the stimulus. As we look at the answer choices, remember that if there is insufficient information in the stimulus to know for certain if Peter or Yoko would agree with a certain fact, that answer choice must be incorrect.

Answer choice (A): Yoko would agree that children’s stories should not be as frightening as they were in the past. However, we do not know if she thinks that they should be less frightening then they are currently. Peter’s opinion on this is completely unknown. He feels that clearly immoral characters are helpful for teaching children lessons, but he does not say if he believes that fear is a necessary part of those stories. Therefore, since we do not know either speaker’s opinion on this fact, it cannot be the Point at Issue.

Answer choice (B): Yoko would agree that current children’s stories are less frightening than those stories in the past. Peter’s opinion however, is unknown. He does not provide any information in his argument as to how frightening he thinks children stories are, or how frightening they should be. Therefore, since we do not know how one speaker would feel about this answer choice, it cannot be the Point at Issue.

Answer choice (C): Neither Yoko nor Peter comment on the overall quality of current children’s stories as compared to those in the past. Peter does state that current stories are missing the immoral characters, but he does not say if this makes the overall quality of the stories worse than in the past. Yoko does think it is better that they are missing frightening characters, but she also makes no comment as to the overall quality of the stories.

Answer choice (D): This is the correct answer choice. Peter states that modern stories lack clearly immoral characters. Yoko states that they do have clearly immoral characters. Since the two speakers would disagree, this is the correct answer choice.

Answer choice (E): Peter would agree that children’s stories should help children learn the consequences of being bad. Yoko, however, does not state an opinion either way. Since we do not know her opinion on the issue, it cannot be the Point at Issue.

[christopher20x]

Hello,

I was quite confused about why D was correct. Peter mentions that "most" stories don't have clearly immoral characters in them. However, since Peter mentions "most" and not "all", I assumed that Peter would agree that "some" children's stories would have clearly immoral characters.

Yoko mentions that children's stories still have clearly immoral characters.

Because Peter mentions most, and Yoko agrees that these stories do have the immoral characters, I didn't see how D would be correct. Both mention, to some degree, that immoral characters would be in them.

[Paul Marsh]

Hi christopher!

Yoko mentions that children's stories still have clearly immoral characters.

Yoko doesn't just say that some children's stories have immoral characters. Rather, she says that children's stories tend to have immoral characters. If a kind of story tends to have a characteristic, that means it's likely/probable to have that characteristic (see definition below)

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dic ... glish/tend

In other words, Yoko is saying that the majority of children's stories have immoral characters. Peter, of course, says the exact opposite. Thus they disagree whether the majority of children's stories have immoral characters. (D) lays this disagreement out nicely. If you took out the "tend to" from Yoko's statement, then you are correct that (D) would no longer be a good answer for the reasons you stated.

Hope that helps!