#14 - Strengthen

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

(See the complete passage discussion here: lsat/viewtopic.php?t=14636)

Strengthen, Specific Reference. The correct answer choice is (B)

This question asks which answer choice most effectively strengthens the author’s claim in the last
sentence, which basically states the main point of the passage: a complete historiography requires
consideration of the actions of the early Chinese settlers.

Answer choice (A): Since this response implies nothing directly about Chinese involvement in
transforming the landscape, this answer is incorrect. Things change with time, and knowing what
occurred during the past decade does not prove what occurred over a century ago. Further, the speed of
the growth of the specialty crops relative to that of other crops has no clear relevance.

Answer choice (B): This is the correct answer choice, as this response would lend credibility to the claim that it was Chinese ancestors who converted the swamplands to grow the specialty crops currently
cultivated by their Chinese descendants.

Answer choice (C): While this answer choice does provide evidence that irrigation is beneficial to
agribusiness, it does nothing to provide support for the assertion that this benefit is attributable to early
Chinese influence. Since this answer does not strengthen the claim from the last sentence in the passage,
this choice is incorrect.

Answer choice (D): A steady increase in the efficiency of irrigations systems does not offer insight
into their original source in the region. While this answer choice does appear to support the claim that
irrigations improvements began in the nineteenth century, it does little to strengthen the claim that the
early Chinese influence must be considered to form a more complete historiography.

Answer choice (E): Since we already know, given the passage, that agribusiness in the US Pacific Coast
region is thriving, it does not strengthen the author’s argument to add reasons to believe that things can
grow well in that area. Although this response might make it more likely that irrigation is a good idea, it
has nothing to do with whether such irrigation is attributable to early Chinese influence.

[Albertlyu]

hi Powerscore,

Please may I ask if anyone can elaborate on this one, why B instead of D. My reasoning is this: the main claim is: if understand the good performance of agriculture here--->Chinese involvement must be considered. In order to strengthen this argument, anything that shows Chinese interactions here helped the agricultural development would do the job. I vacillated between B and D, as I could not tell the difference.

thank you.

AL

[sdb606]

I don't agree with the explanation for C (which I picked). C closes the link between irrigation and the agribusiness success. It proves that it was the Chinese settlers' irrigation practices which brought about prosperity. Without that link, I could say that the Chinese settlers' farming practices had nothing to do with the region's success. Maybe it was the weather.

I think C is wrong because it says ARID lands but the passage discusses SWAMP lands.

Reasonable?

[Adam Tyson]

Albertlyu: Answer D does nothing to strengthen the claim that we cannot understand the current successful use of the land in the area without paying attention to the input of Chinese settlers, because it says nothing about those settlers. Perhaps we can understand how things came to be the way they are by just looking at the written records? Or perhaps it was the work of Dutch settlers, rather than Chinese settlers, that were the key factor in expanding irrigation and swamp reclamation in the area? Answer D gives us no additional reason to believe that we are required to look to the actions of Chinese settlers to truly understand how we got to be the way we are now.

sdb606: You're correct that answer C deals with the wrong type of land, arid rather than swamp. But that answer also has the same problem described above regarding answer: there is nothing in that answer to suggest that we must look to the actions of Chinese settlers to understand how the region got to be the way it is now. As stated above, we might be able to ignore them completely and rely on the actions and/or written records of others.