Lyle: Admittedly, modernizing the language of premodern plays lessens their aesthetic quality, but such modernizing remains valuable for teaching history, since it makes the plays accessible to students who would otherwise never enjoy them.

Carl: But such modernizing prevents students from understanding fully what the plays said to premodern audiences. Thus, modernizing plays is of no use for teaching history, because students cannot gain deep knowledge of the past from modernized plays.

Speaker 1 Summary
Lyle thinks that modernized plays are a useful way to teach history, albeit an imperfect one. To explain why modernized plays are useful, Lyle says that modernization makes the plays accessible to students who would otherwise not enjoy the play at all.

Speaker 2 Summary
Carl argues that modernized plays are useless to teach history. To explain why, Carl says that modernizing plays prevents students from completely understanding the plays’ original meanings. This then prevents the students from gaining deep knowledge of the past. (Carl is assuming that not providing deep knowledge of the past makes something useless for teaching history.)

Objective
We need to find a disagreement. The speakers disagree about whether modernized plays are useful for teaching history.

A
whether modernizing the language of premodern plays results in plays that have different pedagogical value than the originals
Carl agrees with this, and most likely, so does Lyle. Carl’s conclusion is that modernized plays are pedagogically worse than the originals, which is a difference. Lyle acknowledges that modernized plays are aesthetically poorer, which likely means a different pedagogical value.
B
whether the loss in aesthetic quality that results from modernizing the language of premodern plays lessens the plays’ usefulness for teaching history
Carl agrees that modernized plays are less useful to teach history, but never specifies that it’s because of a loss of aesthetic quality. Lyle never compares the usefulness of modernized and original plays at all, just says that the latter are still useful.
C
whether the highest form of aesthetic enjoyment of premodern plays comes from seeing them as they were originally performed
Neither speaker makes this claim. Neither Lyle nor Carl discusses how one can get the most enjoyment of premodern plays, nor do they talk about seeing the plays performed versus reading them.
D
whether increasing the accessibility of premodern plays through modernizing their language is valuable for teaching history
Lyle thinks that this is true but Carl thinks that it’s false; this is the disagreement. Lyle says that modernized plays are useful because they’re more accessible. Carl argues that modernized plays are useless for teaching because they don’t give deep knowledge of the past.
E
whether using plays with modernized language to teach history requires that there be some loss in the aesthetic quality of the plays
Lyle agrees with this, but Carl doesn’t state an opinion. Carl doesn’t talk about aesthetic quality at all, instead giving different reasons why modernized plays are a poor tool for teaching history.

28 comments

In order to relieve traffic congestion, the city of Gastner built a new highway linking several of the city’s suburbs to the downtown area. However, the average commute time for workers in downtown Gastner increased after the new highway opened.

"Surprising" Phenomenon

Why did the average commute time for workers in downtown Gastner increase after the new highway, which linked several suburbs to downtown and was built to relieve traffic congestion, opened?

Objective

The correct answer will be a hypothesis that explains a key difference in traffic patterns before and after the new highway opened. This difference must result in an increased commute time for downtown workers, either because of an overall increase in drivers to downtown Gastner, or because of some traffic shift caused by the new highway.

A
Most people who work in the downtown area of Gastner commute from one of the city’s suburbs.

If most downtown workers commute from the suburbs and the new highway links the suburbs to downtown, shouldn’t most downtown workers’ commute time have decreased? (A) doesn’t help to explain why the average commute time actually increased after the highway opened.

B
The location of the new highway is most convenient for people who commute to and from Gastner’s largest suburbs.

The highway’s convenience for people from the largest suburbs doesn’t explain why the average commute time for downtown workers increased after the highway opened. We need an answer choice that explains how traffic patterns in Gastner changed because of the new highway.

C
Shortly after the new highway was opened, several suburban roads connecting to the new highway were upgraded with new stoplights.

We don't know if new stoplights on suburban roads would increase commute times. Maybe all the suburban roads previously had stop signs, which are generally much slower than stoplights. We still need an explanation for why workers' commute times increased after the highway opened.

D
At the same time the new highway was being built, road repair work was being done on important streets leading to downtown Gastner.

We need an explanation for why workers’ commute times increased after the highway opened, not while the highway was being built.

E
In Gastner’s downtown area, traffic on the roads near the new highway became more congested after the new highway was opened.

This explains a key difference in downtown traffic patterns before and after the new highway opened that caused workers’ commute times to increase. Because of the new highway, traffic on downtown roads near the highway became more congested, which led to increased commute times.


51 comments