#12 - Sartore is a better movie reviewer than Kelly. A movie

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Strengthen. The correct answer choice is (C).

This is a Strengthen question, meaning that we are being asked to find new information in the answer choice to support the argument in the stimulus. The conclusion of the argument is the first sentence: "Sartore is a better movie reviewer than Kelly." Why is Sartore a better reviewer than Kelly? The author tells us that it's because a movie review should help the reader decide whether or not they'll enjoy the movie and a reader is more likely to be able to determine that they will enjoy a particular movie from reading Sartore's reviews than from reading Kelly's reviews. When we're trying to strengthen arguments, we should look for gaps or weak spots in the argument so that we can fill in the gaps or fix the weaknesses. The gap here is a little subtle. The author basically has 2 premises to support why Sartore is a better reviewer than Kelly:

1) A movie review should help readers determine whether or not they are apt to enjoy the movie.
2) A person who is likely to enjoy a particular movies is much more likely to realize this by reading a review by Sartore than a review by Kelly.

So we're told that the criteria for being a good movie review is that it has to help a reader decide whether or not they'll enjoy the movie. So far we only know that Sartore's reviews better help a reader decide if they'll enjoy the movie. We're missing the piece that says Sartore's reviews better help a reader decide if they will NOT enjoy the movie. We need to fill in that gap so that we can strengthen the idea that Sartore's reviews better meet the criteria for being good movie reviews than Kelly's reviews.

Answer choice (A): Nothing in the stimulus says that being a good movie reviewer has anything to do with technical knowledge of film, so this does not strengthen the argument. The only criteria we're given for what makes a good movie review is whether it helps the reader determine whether or not they will enjoy the movie. We need to strengthen the idea that Sartore's reviews better meet this criteria than Kelly's reviews.

Answer choice (B): It doesn't matter whether most of Kelly's movie reviews are unfavorable. This does nothing to strengthen that Sartore is a better reviewer.

Answer choice (C): This is the correct answer. This matches our prephrase above and fills in the gap in the argument. If we know that Sartore's reviews better help readers determine if they will NOT enjoy a movie as well as if they WILL enjoy the movie, then we'll know that his reviews for sure better help readers decided whether or not the will enjoy a movie and are therefore better than Kelly's reviews.

Answer choice (D): Notice that this answer choice is playing a bit of a shell game. It's saying that reading a review by Sartore will help the reader to enjoy the movie...but that's different than helping the reader to decide if they'll enjoy the movie. The only criteria we're given for what makes a good movie review is whether it helps the reader determine whether or not they will enjoy the movie. We need to strengthen the idea that Sartore's reviews better meet this criteria than Kelly's reviews.

Answer choice (E): Whether they review most of the same movies or not is irrelevant as to which one is the better reviewer.

[maximbasu]

Hi,
I chose D while the correct answer is C.

The stimulus states:
1. Principle: movie review should help tell you if you'll enjoy a movie or not
2. Likelihood: reading S's review you'll realize you'll like a movie more than if you read K's review
3. Paradox: S likes to hate on movies more than K

Function: strengthen: S is a better reviewer than K

Is D wrong because it doesn't add any new info on WHY S is a better reviewer? For instance, he may be comedic and that's why you enjoy the movie more after you read his review, but K can still write better reviews.

C: Is it correct because if you're apt not to enjoy a movie, and you're more likely to realize this after reading S's review thank K's, then S performs this function better than K and this makes him a better reviewer.

[Jonathan Evans]

Hi, Max,

Good job outlining the reasoning. Let's strip this information down and elicit the salient points.

First, you are correct that the conclusion is:

Sartore is a better movie reviewer than Kelly.

The premises are as follows:

(1) A movie review should help readers determine whether or not they will likely enjoy the movie
(2) A person who is likely to enjoy a given movie is more likely to realize this by reading Sartore than by reading Kelly.

The final information about this negative review stuff is predictable garbage tacked on to the end. How can you anticipate this? It has no relationship to the other premises. It has no relationship to the principle outlined above.

Let's talk assumptions now. First the author assumes that not only is a review's propensity to help readers determine whether or not they will likely enjoy the movie a criterion to help determine whether one reviewer is better than another but is also a fundamental and required metric by which any two given movie reviewers should be judged. In other words, the author assumes that there is no other metric that is more significant to determining who's the better movie reviewer than whether a review will help readers determine whether or not they will likely enjoy the movie.

Second (and this is the key here) we know from the premises that a person who IS likely to enjoy a given movie will determine this from Sartore over Kelly. However, we do not know about the other people, the people who AREN'T likely to enjoy a given movie.

Answer (C) addresses this assumption/gap.

The credited response to strengthen questions needs to strengthen the conclusion by either (1) providing new information that will help shore up the gap or (2) ruling out a possible bad scenario that would exploit the gap.

Answer choice (D) does not address this gap, and it also does not give any more reason that Sartore's work should have more relative worth than Kelly's work.

[kfactor901@gmail.com]

I chose E on this question because it does seem to show that both are the same and strengthens. Is this wrong because it isn't the best answer?

[Adam Tyson]

Hey there Kfactor. E doesn't do anything to strengthen here because it doesn't tell us any more about whether one reviewer is better than the other. So K reviews the same movies as S - does S review the same movies as K? Do people find K's reviews helpful in the way we are told they should? The fact that they look at some of the same movies doesn't really help much without knowing more.

Also, yes, it is not the best answer. We know from the stimulus that S's reviews are more likely to be helpful in determining which movies you WILL enjoy, but that is only half the equation. We also want help determining which ones we will NOT enjoy, and answer C provides that info for us. If K's reviews did that better, the argument would be much worse, so telling us that S's reviews accomplish that goal is good news for our author, much better than the news given in answer E.

Hope that helped!

[beeryslurs]

Hi I have a question regarding the correct answer. I understand how the answer can fill the gap in the reasoning of the argument; but the stimulus also states that "Sartore is more likely to give a movie an unfavorable review than a favorable one", and in that case, wouldn't it be normal that even if Sartore is not necessarily better than Kelly, one who is apt not to enjoy a movie would be more likely to realize this by reading Sartore's review? I mean, when we read a review unfavorable towards a movie, surely we would be more likely to feel that we do not like the movie ourselves.

[KelseyWoods]

Hi beeryslurs!

The statement about Sartore being more likely to give unfavorable reviews than Kelly isn't really connected to the conclusion here so it's not an integral part of this argument. You also want to be careful about adding your own assumptions into the argument. Reading an unfavorable review of a movie doesn't necessarily mean that you're more likely to think you will not enjoy the movie. For example. what if Sartore is like this super pompous movie snob who is only into really artsy, esoteric films and he writes absolutely scathing reviews of action movies because he prefers movies that make you think. If I love action movies and hate movies that make you think, then I might realize from reading his unfavorable reviews of action films that I'll actually like those movies, because I know we have very different tastes in film.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey