Prompt: Which one of the following, if true, most strengthens the educator’s argument?
Difficulty: 🌕🌑🌑🌑
How will the right answer fit in terms of support and conclusion?
Only the right answer will add support for the conclusion.
Highlight the main conclusion in the passage, if there is one:
schools should not require students to take courses in individual academic disciplines but should instead require them to take interdisciplinary courses.
Educator: [SUPPORT]. Thus, [CONCLUSION].
Map the wording of the answers to the wording of the passage:
(A) …using only common sense.
This is bringing in something new the passage doesn’t mention. It’s not immediately clear how that supports the author’s preference for “interdisciplinary courses”, so it’s out.
(B) …able to teach courses in a single academic discipline more effectively…
That would seem to support the single discipline thing, which goes against the author’s conclusion. We want something negative, or something positive about “interdisciplinary courses”, to support the conclusion.
(C) …rarely able to combine knowledge from those disciplines.
Here’s a downside of “individual academic disciplines” that doesn’t bring in anything new or irrelevant. If this is true, you’d definitely agree that single discipline is not cool and agree with the author that interdisciplinary is better.
(D) …can effectively solve many problems faced in daily life.
Like (B), this is a good thing about “single disciplines”, so it doesn’t support the author’s conclusion.
(E) …not designed specifically to teach students how to solve problems…
How they’re designed doesn’t come up in the passage, so it might not matter at all. This would only be a negative thing about “interdisciplinary courses” anyway, so it doesn’t support the conclusion no matter what.
(C) is the correct answer.
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