#13 - Concept Reference, Author's Perspective, Strengthen

[Administrator]

Please post below with any questions!

[canoekoh]

Doesn't D also support the authors' analysis? D would support lines 8-12.

[David Boyle]

Doesn't D also support the authors' analysis? D would support lines 8-12.

Hello,

Actually, answer D might not support those lines, since those lines, or part of them, talk about World War I, while answer D talks about what happened after the war.
Moreover, the author talks about "migration develops momentum over time as current migration reduces the difficulty and cost of future migration", which doesn't really mesh with what answer D says.

David

[ChicaRosa]

I understand why B is correct but is A wrong because the article never mentions anything about the steady rate of finding employment in the North between 1915-1960?

Thanks!

[AnnBar]

Hello,

Aside from lines 51-57 is there other support for B? I missed the question and now I am realizing that it was in part because I was not allowing myself to go beyond the information provided in the stimulus.

Thank you,

[jw190]

I understand why B is correct but is A wrong because the article never mentions anything about the steady rate of finding employment in the North between 1915-1960?

Thanks!

I think that definitely plays a part in why (A) wouldn't really support the author's analysis of the Great Migration. However, what if it were actually true? Well, the author analyzes The Great Migration two different ways: 1. What started it. 2. Why it continued, and even accelerated past 1960--the recognized end when the income gap between the North and South narrowed sufficiently.

(A) being true doesn't have an impact on the author's analysis of what started the Great Migration / why it continued officially to 1960. Maybe the test makers were trying to trick test takers into thinking that the increased time it took to find employment in the North contributed to the shrinking of the North-South income gap. But this is a stretch as we can't assume (A) would impact the income gap this way. Maybe, despite growing steadily, the average time to find a job in the North was still very short. It may serve as another interesting fact about the Great Migration, but it doesn't support any analysis specifically.

(A) being true doesn't seem to have an impact on what happened after 1960. It may even be claimed that (A) would weaken the later claim that the information provided by early migrants helped motivate new Southerners to migrate even when the income gap had shrunk (if they provided information that it was taking a long time to find employment, new migrants would be less motivated to do so, and we know they continued to migrate). This may be a stretch, because we still wouldn't know if (A) applied to the decades afterward AND even if it had, perhaps the time it took to find employment still wasn't very long.

At least that's my take on (A).

[Adam Tyson]

To answer all three of you, ChicaRose, AnnBar, and JW, here are the factors to consider in analyzing the answer choices to this question:

1) This is a strengthen question, and that means we are not trying to support the answer, but rather assessing whether the answer supports the argument in the passage. In other words, the correct answer should provide new information that makes the argument better. Don't look for support in the passage, but use the answer to support the passage - the information flows back to the passage from the answer choice, not vice versa.

2) Identify the author's conclusion and make it better. He argues that the Great Migration continued even after the income gap had closed because migrations develop momentum over time due to reduced costs of migrating. Those costs are both financial (the actual cost of physically moving) and social (the difficulty of adapting to a new culture). We want to find an answer that supports the idea that the migration continued because the financial and social costs of moving diminished over that time.

Answer A actually weakens that claim. If it took longer and longer to find work in the North over that time period, that would demonstrate increasing costs related to migration. The longer you are out of work, the harder it is to adjust (both financially and probably socially) to a new community. What happened after 1960 isn't relevant to our analysis, nor are we looking for support in the passage that this was in fact the case. IF it was true, then our author's argument would be damaged, not supported - there would have to be some other reason why the migration kept going other than reduced costs.

Answer B is correct not because the passage tells us anything about specifically where the migrants came from, but because if it were true then it would support the claim about reducing physical costs. Earlier migrants return to their home communities in the south and then bring new migrants from those same communities with them when returning to their new homes in the north.

Remember that with Strengthen questions we want to add new info to improve the argument, and not to support or prove the answers to be true. Accept them as true, and then determine what impact, if any, they have on the argument.

Keep up the good work, y'all!

[aadhiswaran]

Hi, Can you again clarify why D is not right? I understand D only gives a limited support as to the increase in migration during the world war period but not for after, it is still a direct factor that contributes to the migration. I figured D was too wide a scope and chose B. But how can you figure what is too narrow and too wide?

[Jeff Wren]

Hi aadhiswaran,

This question is asking for an answer that best supports (or strengthens) the authors' analysis of the Great Migration.

The first step in correctly answering this question is to identify what is the authors' analysis. In the first and second paragraphs of the passage, the authors explain why the Great Migration started in 1915 (labor demand in North meant higher pay).

In the third and fourth paragraphs, the authors explain why the Great Migration continued even after the North-South income differences narrowed. Their basic argument is that "migration develops momentum over time as current migration reduces the difficulty and cost of future migration" (lines 23-25). In other words, the earlier migrants made it easier for later migrants by showing them the way and helping them adapt to the new environment.

It is this explanation, the idea of the earlier migrants helping the newer migrants, that we need to strengthen. We are not just trying to find an answer that supports that the migration happened, but why it was caused by this momentum.

Answer D does nothing to strengthen this explanation. Answer D actually suggests an alternate reason or cause for why the migration happened, i.e. that Northern employers had to send more agents to recruit employees in the South. This actually weakens the authors' explanation by suggesting an alternate cause for the migration (other than the momentum/older migrants helping newer migrants).