1. (TCOs 2 and 3) What issue is the speaker using to take a position in the following situation? Readers may learn something about their own relationship to the earth by reading the work of conservationists, who spend a lifetime studying the ways that people and civilizations affect the environment. (Points : 4)
A. Whether conservationists can inform readers about local needs
B. Whether true conservationists have something to teach readers about how to study the earth
C. Whether readers can learn a few things about the environment from conservationists
D. That only conservationists understand the environment in a true sense
Question 2. 2. (TCOs 2 and 3) What issue is the speaker using to take a position in the following situation? There is little merit to the claim that inheritance taxes will force small businesses to close. After all, the tax has existed for a long time, and there are still plenty of small businesses started every day. (Points : 4)
A. Whether inheritance taxes hit poor people harder than they hit rich people
B. Whether inheritance taxes place an undue burden on small businesses
C. Whether to find a better way than inheritance tax to raise revenue for the state
D. Whether to evaluate tax law based on personal opinion
Question 3. 3. (TCOs 1 and 2) In this passage, identify which of the items that follow best states the primary issue discussed in the passage. In pre-civil war Spain, the influence of the Catholic Church must have been much stronger on women than on men. You can determine this by looking at the number of religious communities, such as monasteries, nunneries, and so forth. A total of about 5,000 such communities existed in 1931; 4,000 of them were female, whereas only 1,000 of them were male. Seems to me that proves my point about the Church's influence on the sexes. (Points : 4)
A. Whether the civil war in Spain was a factor in religious activity in Spain
B. Whether the speaker's statistics really prove his point about the Church's influence
C. Whether the figures about religious communities really have anything to do with the overall influence on the Catholic Church in Spain
D. Whether the Catholic Church's influence was greater on women than on men in pre-civil war Spain
Question 4. 4. (TCOs 1 and 2) In this passage, identify which of the items that follow best states the primary issue discussed in the passage. The winner of this year's spelling bee is a straight-A student whose favorite subject is science, which isn't surprising, because students interested in science learn to pay attention to details. (Points : 4)
A. Whether science students learn to pay attention to detail
B. Whether learning science will improve a student's ability to spell
C. Whether learning science teaches a student to pay attention to details
D. None of the above
Question 5. 5. (TCO 4) In this passage, identify which cognitive bias is being used. The TV show The Sopranos might have been a pretty good series without the profanity that occurred all the way through it. But without the profanity, it would not have been believable. Those people just talk that way. If you have them speaking Shakespearean English or middle-class suburban English, then nobody is going to pay any attention to the message because nobody will see it as realistic. It's true, of course, that like many other programs with some offensive feature whether it's bad language, sex, or whatever it will never appeal to the squeamish. (Points : 4)
A. In-group bias
B. Loss aversion
C. False consensus effect
D. Belief bias