PriyamRathor
BillyZ
Country X's recent stock-trading scandal should not diminish investors' confidence in the country's stock market. For one thing, the discovery of the scandal confirms that Country X has a strong regulatory system, as the following considerations show. In any stock market, some fraudulent activity is inevitable. If a stock market is well regulated, any significant stock-trading fraud in it will very likely be discovered. This deters potential perpetrators and facilitates improvement in regulatory processes.
In the argument, the portion in boldface plays which of the following roles?
(A) It is the argument's only conclusion.
(B) It is the conclusion for which the argument provides support and which itself is used to support the argument's main conclusion.
(C) It is argument's main conclusion and is supported by another explicitly stated conclusion for which further support is provided.
(D) It is an assumption for which no explicit support is provided and is used to support the argument's only conclusion.
(E) It is a compound statement containing both the argument's main conclusion and an assumption used to support that conclusion.
Question No.: CR 651
Hello Experts,
GMATNinjakarishmaMartyTargetTestPrepCountry X's recent stock-trading scandal should not diminish investors' confidence in the country's stock market I assumed this to be an intermediate conclusion or just an opinion of the author.
In any stock market, some fraudulent activity is inevitableI though this to be the Main Conclusion
Q1 .How to find MAIN CONCLUSION in
any passage ?
Q2. How to differentiate between MAIN CONCLUSION and INTERMEDIATE CONCLUSION ?
Thanks
A conclusion is a statement for which the author provides some kind of support. For example, consider this argument: "It's nice out, so we will go to the park."
Here, the conclusion is that "we will go to the park," and the support for that conclusion is that "it's nice out."
To find the
main conclusion of an argument, ask yourself
why the author wrote the passage as a whole. What, at the end of the day, are they trying to convince the reader of? What does all of the evidence in the passage lead up to?
Here's another example: "It's nice out, so we will go to the park. That means that we'll have an awesome day."
The main conclusion is now "we'll have an awesome day." The reason
why I wrote this argument is to lead up to this conclusion. The other sentence provides support for this main conclusion.
Because I've inserted a more important conclusion, "we will go to the park" is now just an intermediate conclusion. It is still supported by the fact that "it's nice out," but it doesn't capture the heart of why I wrote the argument as a whole.
Looking at the official question:
Quote:
Country X's recent stock-trading scandal should not diminish investors' confidence in the country's stock market. For one thing, the discovery of the scandal confirms that Country X has a strong regulatory system, as the following considerations show. In any stock market, some fraudulent activity is inevitable. If a stock market is well regulated, any significant stock-trading fraud in it will very likely be discovered. This deters potential perpetrators and facilitates improvement in regulatory processes.
At the end of the day, why did the author write this argument?
Well, he/she starts with a pretty strong statement: "Country X's recent stock-trading scandal should not diminish investors' confidence in the country's stock market." Is this just an intermediate conclusion, as you've suggested? That really depends on the structure of the rest of the argument.
Immediately after the first sentence, the author launches into some supporting evidence. Why should investors still be confident? Because "the discovery of the scandal confirms that Country X has a strong regulatory system."
Then, the author provides a chain of logic to support this statement. Why does the scandal confirm that Country X has a strong regulatory system? The author explains why in the last three sentences.
Overall, the last three sentences support the second sentence, which supports the first sentence. That makes the first sentence the main conclusion and the second sentence an intermediate conclusion.
(B) is the correct answer.
I hope that helps!