Reading comp PrepTest 128 · Section 1 · Question 6

Passage

Questions 6-13  .        In many Western societies, modern bankruptcy  . laws have undergone a shift away from a focus Remaining source text redacted.
Passage walkthrough
Passage Summary

Topic: Legal Studies


Paragraph 1

  • Paragraph note
    • Old Approach and New Approach
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
    • Old Approach - Bankruptcy focuses on punishment
    • New Approach - Bankruptcy as a remedy for individuals/businesses/creditors
    • Critics - Trend to more bankruptcies is bad; we should go back to punishment
    • Author - New approach serves needs of society and lets people participate in economy, so it’s good

Paragraph 2

  • Paragraph note
    • Why Old Approach; Author’s rebuttal
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
    • Old approach - Throw people in jail; dissolve businesses
    • Why? - Breaking social contract, need to be removed from society
    • Author - That doesn’t help anyone - creditors don’t get paid, businesses closing disrupts employees and customers

Paragraph 3

  • Paragraph note
    • New approach - Underlying beliefs; mechanism; goals
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
    • Underlying beliefs (2) - 1) public good is paramount; 2) public good better served with businesses existing and people not in jail (they can earn and pay back)
    • Mechanism - Courts reorganize debt and transfer assets
    • Still have punitive functions (Examples - public record of bankruptcy; affect credit rating)
    • Goal - Restore business/individual to economic health and get creditors paid

Main Point: Modern bankruptcy laws, with their focus on getting people and businesses back to economic health so that they can repay creditors, are better than the old punitive bankruptcy laws.

Key Lines?

Lines 1-6 - An Old Approach and a New Approach

Lines 6-9 - An argument to go back to the old approach

Lines 13-18 - Author’s overall opinion (pro New Approach)

Lines 24-29 - Why Old Approach adopted

Lines 29-34 - Author rebuts

Lines 54-59 - Author sums up her argument

Meta-Structure?

Old Approach/New Approach - The first sentence pretty explicitly raises an Old Approach to bankruptcy law and the shift to a New Approach. This strongly suggests that the Author is going to explore the two approaches to see which one is better, or take elements from each to recommend a “compromise” approach. In this case, we get the former - she concludes the first paragraph by stating that the New Approach “serve[s] the varied interests of the greatest number of citizens.” Paragraph 2 then explains why the Old Approach was adopted, but the Author then pivots away from that (Line 30 - “But”) to show why it wasn’t helpful. She then closes out the passage by spending the last paragraph arguing why the New Approach (modern bankruptcy law) is better - it is the most likely way to restore businesses, individuals, and creditors to economic health. When a passage falls into this Meta-Structure, the Author’s opinion of the New Approach is generally the main point. Since she argues in favor of it here, that should be our main point, as we stated above.

Last Thoughts?

Paragraph 3 had a series of elements in it that are likely to show up in the questions - underlying beliefs, a mechanism, and goals. Each of these are generally important on the exam, so we should have noted where each one is in the paragraph, and also kept quick notes on what they were. While it would take a bit of time to do that while reading, it should save us a lot of time on the questions!

Question prompt

Which one of the Remaining source text redacted.
Why the credited answer is right

Credited answer: A

The notes below walk through why it fits the stem and how to eliminate the rest.

Question Type

Legal

Strategy Overview

Reiterate the main point as we summarized it after reading through the passage, then find the answer that best matches with it

Answer Anticipation

The first sentence pretty explicitly raises an Old Approach to bankruptcy law and the shift to a New Approach. When this is the case, we’re almost certainly dealing with an Old Approach/New Approach passage, generally involving the Author exploring the two approaches to see which one is better.Here, the Author concludes the first paragraph by stating that the New Approach “serve[s] the varied interests of the greatest number of citizens.” Paragraph 2 then explains why the Old Approach was adopted, but the Author then pivots away from that (Line 30 - “But”) to show why it wasn’t helpful. She then closes out the passage by spending the last paragraph arguing why the New Approach (modern bankruptcy law) is better - it is the most likely way to restore businesses, individuals, and creditors to economic health.When a passage falls into this Meta-Structure, the Author’s opinion of the New Approach is generally the main point. Since she argues in favor of it here, that should be our main point:Modern bankruptcy laws, with their focus on getting people and businesses back to economic health so that they can repay creditors, are better than the old punitive bankruptcy laws.

Answer choices

  1. A
    The modern trend in Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice A matches the stem

    (A) (Lines 13-18) The Author argues that the modern approach to bankruptcy - focusing on restoring people/businesses to economic health rather than punishing them - should be retained and that it serves the interests of the greatest number of people. Since this is the new approach that she spends the entire passage discussing the benefits of, it’s the main point. This answer captures the New Approach and the Author’s positive opinion of it, so this is the correct answer.

  2. B
    Bankruptcy laws have evolved Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice B is not credited

    (B) (Lines 5-6) First, this answer choice doesn’t tell us if the Author thinks that this is a good thing, whereas the passage was built around her argument in favor of modern bankruptcy laws. Second, the benefit to creditors was only one aspect of these new bankruptcy laws, and there was no indication that it was the driving force behind their adoption.

  3. C
    Modern bankruptcy laws are Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice C is not credited

    (C) (Lines 16-18; Lines 54-59) The Author argues that the modern laws, in allowing businesses to continue functioning and employing people, and allowing individuals to work to pay back creditors, is actually better economically than dissolving businesses and throwing people in jail. This answer is contradicted by the passage.

  4. D
    Punishment for debt no Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice D is not credited

    (D) This answer captures the abandonment of the Old Approach, but it doesn’t discuss the New Approach at all. Since the Author’s argument was focused on why the New Approach is better, this answer misses the mark. (There’s also no indication that going to jail isn’t a deterrent for debtors!)

  5. E
    Greater economic interdependence has Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice E is not credited

    (E) (Lines 15-18) The Author does note that modern laws better serve the needs of an interdependent society. However, she doesn’t say that it’s more interdependent than it used to be, or that the interests of debtors and creditors in the old days hadn’t converged (it seems as if they have always been aligned - get the creditor their money back!). And, outside of those factual discrepancies, there’s also no indication in the passage that any increase in interdependence or alignment of interests was the driving force behind the change to laws - maybe the change was due to advocacy for a more humane system, and it just had the added benefit of serving an interdependent society better.

What this tests

Question analytics

Based on historical answer selection rates for this question.

Answer choice distribution

  1. A Credited 89%
  2. B 3%
  3. C 1%
  4. D 1%
  5. E 6%

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