Reading comp PrepTest 128 · Section 1 · Question 7

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

In stating that bankruptcy Remaining source text redacted.
Why the credited answer is right

Credited answer: D

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

Question Type

Legal

Strategy Overview

Review the purpose of the paragraph including Line 5, then use that and the immediately context to define what the Author means by “perhaps unexpectedly”

Answer Anticipation

Before we dive into the passage at all, we should think about “perhaps unexpectedly” as a phrase with an inherent meaning. It implies that something would set an expectation that isn’t met in this case. So whatever the Author is discussing, the expectations would be that it wouldn’t help creditors. However, the Author argues that it actually does.With that in mind, let’s head to the passage. Line 5 shows up in Paragraph 1, where we said that the Author introduces the Old and New Approaches - bankruptcy law to punish, versus bankruptcy law to help individuals and corporations in financial trouble.Line 5 shows up at the end of the first sentence, where the shift from the Old Approach to the New Approach is discussed. There, the Author says that this shift was focused on helping individuals and corporations, but “perhaps unexpectedly” it helps the creditors.With the inherent meaning of the phrase, we should consider what might be expected based on the shift. Since the focus was on helping individuals and creditors in debt, one might expect that the creditors - those who are owed money - might be out of luck. However, according to the Author, this isn’t the case - these creditors are better served with the new focus. She then goes on to show why this is the case.So let’s find an answer stating that “perhaps unexpectedly” here conveys that the Author believes that people might assume the shift to focusing on helping individuals/corporations out of debt would hurt creditors, when in reality it would have the opposite effect.

Answer choices

  1. A
    are often surprised to Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice A is not credited

    (A) This initial section doesn’t discuss bankruptcy courts at all, let alone their decisions, so this answer is out of scope.

  2. B
    have unintentionally become the Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice B is not credited

    (B) “Chief beneficiaries” is too strong here - there’s no indication that they’re better off because of the shift than the individuals who used to end up in jail or the corporations that used to go out of business.

  3. C
    were a consideration, though Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice C is not credited

    (C) The Author says that it’s unexpected that the creditors have benefited from this shift from punishment to bankruptcy as a remedy for financial troubles. If the creditors were a consideration as the laws were formulated, then it wouldn’t be surprising that they would benefit from them!

  4. D
    are better served than Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice D matches the stem

    (D) The passage starts by stating there has been a shift away from bankruptcy laws as punishment to a focus on them as a remedy for individuals and businesses in financial trouble. If this is the case, then one might assume that the creditors would be in a worse position with these new laws since they’re meant to help out those who owe the creditors money. The Author, on the other hand, argues that “perhaps unexpectedly” the creditors benefit, as well. This answer captures that pivot, so it’s correct.

  5. E
    were themselves active in Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice E is not credited

    (E) The passage doesn’t discuss the groups involved in drafting this legislation, so this answer is out of scope.

What this tests

Question analytics

Based on historical answer selection rates for this question.

Answer choice distribution

  1. A 5%
  2. B 11%
  3. C 11%
  4. D Credited 73%
  5. E 1%

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