#22 - Most children find it very difficult to explain

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Strengthen-PR. The correct answer choice is (D)

The conclusion in this stimulus is that understanding what a word means does not depend on being able to explain it. The evidence for this conclusion is that children are able to properly use words to convey their feelings (things that cannot be touched/seen), even though those children may not be able to explain exactly what those words mean. To strengthen this argument, recognize that the idea of “understanding” is new in the conclusion, and to support it we need to show that using a word properly indicates an understanding of what that word actually means.

Answer choice (A): This does not address understanding, so it cannot be correct.

Answer choice (B): This stimulus is about NOT being able to explain what a word means, so this answer choice does not address the scenario in the stimulus.

Answer choice (C): Again, this answer does not address the new term “understanding,” so it cannot be correct.

Answer choice (D): This is the correct answer choice. As noted above, this answer choice connects the idea of using a word properly with understanding what that word means.

Answer choice (E): Again, to support this conclusion you need to address the new term it contains (“understanding”), and since this answer does not do that it cannot be correct.

[Juanq42]

How would one begin to diagram this question? I reacted to the following words:

Most children... (answer cannot be absolute)

...those words do not refer to things that can be seen or touched... (OR)

Yet since... (counter premise indicator)

...obviously experiencing (i recalled from previous podcasts that "obviously" does not indicate a necessary term...do I recall correctly?)

...understanding what a word means clearly does not depend on being able to explain it. (? I am confused at this point).

That's the best I could do. I'd appreciate the help!

[Jeremy Press]

Hi Juan,

It turns out not to be necessary to formally "diagram" this question, because the argument in the stimulus does not rely on either conditional logic (no "if, then" style premises) or formal logic (no combinations of quantitative claims) to reach its conclusion.

Instead, make sure you've labeled the parts of the argument appropriately. What is the conclusion? The last statement, which you can identify as conclusion because it is explicitly based on the "Yet, since" premise and implicitly based on the first sentence as well. The other two claims are premises supporting the conclusion.

Conclusion: "nderstanding what a word means clearly does not depend on being able to explain it."

Premise 1 (first sentence): Most children find it very difficult to explain exactly what the abstract [i.e. words referring to "unseen" or "untouched" things] words they use mean.

Premise 2 ("Yet, since" premise): "[C]hildren are able to use these words to convey the feelings and emotions they are obviously experiencing."

As the explanation in the original post notes, we want a principle that supports the conclusion, and there is a problem in the argument. The conclusion refers to the concept of "understanding" a word's meaning, but the premises only talk about "explaining" words [Premise 1] and "using" words in certain ways [Premise 2]. Since that key Conclusion concept of "understanding" remains unsupported by the premises, the principle is going to have to give us guidance on "understanding" in a way that bridges the premises to the conclusion.

The only two possible contender answers are answer choices B and D, because those are the only answer choices that refer to "understanding" (and thus, that will support that key element of the conclusion).

Answer choice B must be ruled out, because it doesn't fit the facts stated in the premises: it talks about understanding of words flowing from the ability to give an exact explanation of those words. But the children in the stimulus are concluded to have understanding of the words they use, and yet they find it very difficult give explanations of those words. So answer choice B doesn't "match" with the children we're discussing here.

Answer choice D does provide a match: the children in the stimulus do "appropriately use a word to convey something that they are experiencing," as is clear from Premise 2 (they can use the words to convey the feelings and emotions they experience). And answer choice D bridges that information to "understanding." Thus, it is correct.

I hope this helps!

Jeremy

[gavelgirl]

Hello,

I got this one correct, but at first I was narrowed down between B and D. Would you say that B is an opposite answer? B seems to be the opposite of what the conclusion is saying which is why I ruled it out in the end but I want to make sure my reasoning was correct.

Thanks!

[Luke Haqq]

Hi gavelgirl!

You ask,

Would you say that B is an opposite answer? B seems to be the opposite of what the conclusion is saying

I'd say that this is generally right, with one modification. Namely, the conclusion states, "understanding what a word means clearly does not depend on being able to explain it." This is both making a conditional statement and also negating it. This could be represented as something like:

~[ Understanding Able to explain ]

In other words, being able to explain is not a necessary condition of understanding.

Answer choice (B) states, "Anyone who can provide an exact explanation of a word has a clear understanding of what that word means." This can be diagrammed as:

Able to explain Understanding

This is therefore very similar to being a "reversal" of the conclusion, but that negation of the entire conditional statement is a difference that makes it not exactly a reversal, though similar.