tanto64 wrote:
Would be greatly appreciated if someone can help on this difficult question. Thanks!
Hello,
tanto64. I would be happy to offer my thoughts in an effort to assist you and the larger community. The fill-in-the-blank CR question type is typically more streamlined than other types, since the blank tends to be either the conclusion or a premise supporting the conclusion. It almost feels like an RC question instead. In this passage, if we break it down line by line, all two of them, we can get to the pith of the matter.
Sentence 1, long-winded though it may be, tells us that
railway companies specializing in cargo transport were expected to take a financial hit once
commercial flights became viable. We are also given a specific reason to back up this expectation: companies that started using the air service
averaged significantly less use of railway transportation. But wait, would
that not be expected, namely that some companies would switch over from using railway companies to commercial flights? The comparison furthers my own point, telling us that other companies
did not transport their goods by air. This opens the door to these latter companies utilizing railway transport.
Sentence 2 presents a statement of fact. The information from sentence 1
was not sufficient to prove that railway companies should have expected a significant decrease in revenues (my
italics). We need to provide the reason after
because.
Keep in mind, we need to outline why railway companies might not have experienced a sharp decline in revenues with the introduction of commercial flights, so we have to center our reasoning on
revenues.
henilshaht wrote:
A
some companies at that time could not afford air transport.
The old
some trap. The problem with such an answer, as reasonable as it may seem--if some companies could not afford air transport, then perhaps they used the railways--is that
some is completely unqualified. It could mean just two companies out of, say, five hundred, and if those other four hundred ninety-eight companies
could afford air transport and chose to use it, then our blank would not be filled in satisfactorily.
henilshaht wrote:
B
in some cases, companies transporting goods by air still used rail for larger products, because most trains can carry significantly more weight than planes.
Same word, different context. Again, this choice can sound reasonable. If companies that were
transporting goods by air still used rail for larger products, then perhaps this heavy-cargo railway usage could have staved off precipitous declines in revenue for the railway companies. However, we have no information on how many such
cases there were, nor do we know anything about how frequently such companies were shipping extra-heavy cargo.
henilshaht wrote:
C
before commercial flights came into service, most companies that started to use them had been transporting their goods by water and rarely used railway transportation.
This alternative explanation makes complete sense. The majority of the companies that switched to using commercial flights for transporting cargo had
rarely used railway transportation anyway. With this new knowledge, we understand why the revenues of the railway companies might not have been as negatively impacted as predicted. The railways were not losing a lot of clients to commercial flights for cargo transportation.
henilshaht wrote:
D
even though companies using air transport averaged less use than other companies, some individual companies still transported most of their goods by train.
Again, this unqualified
some could represent as few as two
individual companies, and the logic behind the prediction would hold.
henilshaht wrote:
E
some companies used air transport only for urgent shipments and other means of transportation for other shipments.
This one stands out even among the poorer choices. Not only do we get the same problematic
some, but we also get a vague
other means of transportation, which is
not the same as saying that such companies used railway transportation in particular for their cargo. They could have used semi-trucks, for one, or, less probably, animals such as ponies. We simply have no way of pinning down any information in this answer choice that would help us.
The takeaway here is to
watch out for vague or unqualified information. The word
some in particular is one of the most common offenders in this regard. I hope that helps with your query. Good luck with your studies.
- Andrew
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