Q14

[khaleesiwantstodolaw]

I was down to A and D for this question. However, I went with A because the majority of the passage talked about the water bugs developmental responses to their environment. D seemed to me like it was broader in scope than A to serve the primary purpose of the passage. I know I'm supposed to look at the big picture rather than focus on the details for primary purpose questions but I also eliminated D because it seemed to capture the organization of the passage better than its primary purpose.

Help! Also, is their a standard rule of thumb besides focusing on the big picture that I can use in the future to avoid missing primary purpose questions? Thanks!

[noah]

Good question you've posed.

To start, we're asked for the primary purpose. The passage map looks something like this:

P1: outline 3 ways to adapt and give detail about 2 of them (regulatory and acclimatory).
P2: detail about 3rd adaptation type (developmental). Provide example.
P2. more detail, focus on how developmental works in example

(A) looks good -- we did talk about an organism's functional response. Keep it.

(B) is too strong. The passage isn't out to "prove" anything, but to explain stuff.

(C) is too narrow. The different wings are just part of a broader example.

(D) looks good. We did read a discussion of all three responses, and there was an example of one.

(E) is unsupported--the passage isn't specifically contrasting acclimator y and developmental adaptive responses. Where's regulatory?!

Down to (A) and (D). (A) turns out to be too narrow. The water bug example is used to give us more info about one of the three types of adaptive responses. (D) correctly includes that initial discussion. Furthermore, (A) is a bit off when it says "an organism's..." since the example is about most water bug species, i.e. many organism's.

It's tricky to lay out an iron-clad rule about when to ignore an introductory paragraph, but in this passage, the initial paragraph is not a background paragraph from which the author dives into a different topic (e.g. how scientific theories tend to give ridiculous names for processes), but instead the rest of the passage gives us details about one part of what we learned about, and all of that remains a contrast to what we learned in the first paragraph. The fact that a contrast is established is a strong indicator that the first paragraph is not just fluff.

I hope that helps, and tell me if you have any follow-up questions.