Marta: There have been complaints about the lack of recreational areas

Question

Marta: There have been complaints about the lack of recreational areas in our city. Some people favor turning the old railway land into walking trails, but there may be more productive ways of using that land.

Arthur: But the old railway land is ideal for walking trails. Our citizens have gone too long with inadequate recreational areas; we should not dismiss this proposal for walking trails without further consideration.

Arthur’s criticism suggests that he interpreted Marta to be

(A) maintaining that converting the old railway land into walking trails would be an entirely unproductive use of that land

(B) favoring the development of recreational areas other than walking trails

(C) assuming that the complaints concerning a shortage of recreational areas are ill founded

(D) recommending that the proposal for converting the old railway land into walking trails should be promptly dismissed

(E) asserting that it may not be possible to convert the old railway land into adequate walking trails

sudarshan22 · Answer

+1 for  D .

Stimulus   : Marta subtly states that there may be more productive ways of using the land in discussion, and she did not make any innuendo about dismissing the proposal as a whole. Whereas Arthur misinterprets Marta's suggestion to that with dismissing the proposal at all.

(D) recommending that the proposal for converting the old railway land into walking trails should be promptly dismissed -->  Correct .

Hence,  D .

pankhuriarora28 · Answer

Why cant it be A?

AndrewN · Answer

The simple answer,  pankhuriarora28 , is that Marta says, "There may be  more productive  ways of using that land," and this is not the same as saying that the proposed conversion "would be an  entirely unproductive  use of that land." That is, you cannot equate  less productive  to  unproductive . There can be different levels of productivity, as we often see in machine/rate questions in the Quant portion of the exam. In general, you should be wary of extreme or definitive language—e.g., best, never, always—since it is easier to debate than cautious language—e.g., may, could, in some cases. I will admit that I paused myself when I came to  promptly dismissed  in (D), but I was only hesitant about the adverb. In the end, we have to get behind (D) because Arthur makes it clear that he perceives Marta to have passed a hasty judgment on the matter when he says, "we should not dismiss this proposal for walking trails without further consideration."

An effective approach to CR questions is to adopt a linear thinking strategy. The more you stick to the words on the screen, the harder your eventual answer will be to argue against; the more interpretive you get, the less likely you will be to answer correctly.

I hope that helps. Good luck with your studies.

- Andrew

VerbalBot · Answer

Automated notice from GMAT Club VerbalBot: 

A member just gave Kudos to this thread, showing it’s still useful. I’ve bumped it to the top so more people can benefit. Feel free to add your own questions or solutions.

 This post was generated automatically.

Marta: There have been complaints about the lack of recreational areas

Prep Toolkit

Top 5 GMAT Debrief Videos

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards

GMAT Critical Reasoning (CR) Questions

Marta: There have been complaints about the lack of recreational areas

Prep Toolkit

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards