Certain students from a class opted for an English Literature workshop

Question

Certain students from a class opted for an English Literature workshop. After the workshop, these students performed much better in an English grammar quiz than the students who did not attend the workshop. Before attending the workshop, the two groups of students had performed equally well in another English literature quiz. Clearly, either the English Literature workshop helped the students in improving their grammar or the results of the English grammar quiz were not accurate.

The answer to which of the following will be most helpful in evaluating the validity of the conclusion drawn in the argument?

a. Whether the intelligence quotient level of the two groups of students was similar

b. Whether the students who attended the workshop performed better in other subjects as well

c. Whether it is possible to accurately measure the performance in English literature and English grammar through the means of conducting quizzes

d. Whether the students who attended the English literature workshop also attended an English grammar workshop in the past

e. Whether interest in English grammar played a role in the students' decision to opt for the English Literature workshop

SatvikVedala · Answer

Hey  TBT

Just a Question, I understand the conclusion of the statement as " Clearly, either the English Literature workshop helped the students in improving their grammar or the results of the English grammar quiz were not accurate ". If this is TRUE then conclusion talks about  results of grammar

Please explain how option E which talks about  Interest in English Grammar  is relevant over Option D

jatinjain8 · Answer

SatvikVedala

Option D speaks about attending grammar workshop in the past by those students who attended the literature workshop
If the answer is Yes then it may have helped the students 
If the answer is No then it may still hold true that because of literature workshop they got a good knowledge on grammar too

Option E speaks about those students who already have interest (interest doesn't mean they were better in grammar than others) in Grammar took the literature workshop
If the answer is Yes then it makes the conclusion valid that the literature workshop did help to those students 
If the answer is No then it makes the conclusion invalid and that there was some other reason and not the literature workshop/inaccurate results that helped students to score higher

avikalagarwal · Answer

How is E correct? Prior interest in grammar is in no way related to improvement in grammar.

And why isn't C the answer? If it is possible to accurately measure the performance in English literature and English grammar through the means of conducting quizzes then that helps the argument. If it is not, then it doesn't help the argument.

cyrwr1 · Answer

Why not C? if it a reasonable measure, then test results are credible to assume the workshop helped.
if not reliable, then pointless quiz, so fluke result/inaccurate.

nakulvarma · Answer

I agree with  avikalagarwal .

How is E correct? E option assumes that Prior interest in grammar is one of the most crucial way related to improvement in grammar. Without interest too workshop can help students increase in their grammar prior knowledge resulting in better performance in test.

This arguments also assumes that after the workshop both the student groups quiz were of similar intellectual level (or we can say difficulty level), so how is option A incorrect?

Posted from my mobile device

Gemmie · Answer

The conclusion drawn in the argument is that the English Literature workshop helped the students improve their grammar. To evaluate the validity of this conclusion, we need to consider other possible explanations for the difference in performance.

Option e  is the most relevant question. If students who attended the workshop were already interested in English grammar, it's possible that their pre-existing interest, rather than the workshop itself, contributed to their improved performance. This directly challenges the conclusion that the workshop improved their grammar skills and instead suggests that their prior interest in grammar could explain their better performance.

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Why the other answer choices are incorrect:

Option a: Whether the intelligence quotient level of the two groups of students was similar 
While intelligence quotient (IQ) can be a factor in academic performance, the argument already states that the two groups performed equally well in a previous quiz. This suggests that IQ differences are unlikely to account for the performance gap after the workshop.

Option b: Whether the students who attended the workshop performed better in other subjects as well 
This information is irrelevant to the specific claim about the English grammar quiz. The question is whether the workshop specifically improved grammar skills, not overall academic performance.

Option c: Whether it is possible to accurately measure the performance in English literature and English grammar through the means of conducting quizzes

This question addresses the general reliability of the quizzes, not the specific relationship between the workshop and the grammar quiz. If the quizzes are unreliable, it would affect both groups' scores, not just the group that attended the workshop.

Option d: Whether the students who attended the English literature workshop also attended an English grammar workshop in the past 
This introduces a new variable that doesn't directly relate to the causal relationship between the English literature workshop and the improved grammar performance. The key question is whether the  workshop itself  caused the improvement, not whether students in both groups might have had prior exposure to grammar workshops. The fact that some students might have attended other grammar workshops doesn't necessarily negate the potential impact of the  specific literature workshop  being discussed.

Nipunh · Answer

Hi Experts! KarishmaB   GMATNinja   GMATNinja 2  MartyMurray

First of all thanks a lot for your contribution on these forums! I am truly grateful for your efforts, knowledge and experience!

I am baffled by this one. Please help me with this, I am not able to understand why E is correct. I feel we have to assume a lot of things to make it look correct...as interest doesn't really translate into skill... I was more inclined towards C and D but they do have their own sets of problem... in C, the logical implication was doubting the accuracy of the tests (which has been explicitly given in the conclusion as the second reason) and in D we have to assume that those grammar workshops really helped the student... A and B looked OOS for the arguement at hand.

Please give a detailed solution for this one as I am not really convinced with my reasoning as well.

Thanks and regards,
Nipunh

KarishmaB · Answer

Nipunh, I usually do not evaluate non official questions since the logic at times seems iffy to me and we cannot carry forward a takeaway if we do deem something debatable. Hence I usually do not respond to a non official verbal question tag. It is best to query the test maker in that case.

That said, this question looks fine to me. I would have picked (E) here. 
There are 2 diff things - Grammar and Lit. 
The first test was Lit test in which all performed equally. The workshop was a Lit workshop. 
The test after the workshop was a Grammar test.

So can we say that the Lit workshop improved the grammar?

For that we need to know how all the learners would have performed in a grammar test before the workshop. But we do not know it. But if we have some indication whether the ones who took the Lit workshop were a biased sample or not, that could help us. This is what option (E) gives. 
If we can find whether the ones who took the workshop were the ones more interested in grammar (and hence more likely to do well), then I could say whether the workshop helped them or not.

We could debate the answer to end and beyond but here is the thing - for non official verbal questions (all of them - including my own for ANA PREP), you do not need to get too much into analysis. 
When I read the question stem here, this was my first question - Were the people who took the workshop already good at grammar? After all their Lit performance was the same before th workshop, not grammar performance. Non official questions help hammer these basic points home and hence are useful. Learn and move on.

Certain students from a class opted for an English Literature workshop

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Certain students from a class opted for an English Literature workshop

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