Reading comp PrepTest 139 · Section 2 · Question 9

Topic: Science

Paragraph 1

• Paragraph note
  • A phenomenon
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, points of intersection, and the author's attitude
  • Phenomenon - Honeybees tell others where to find food
  • Aristotle - Not sure how, but bees to dance
  • von Frisch/1940s - Pattern to the dance
  • Question - How does the dance transmit info?

Paragraph 2

• Paragraph note
  • Proposed explanations
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, points of intersection, and the author's attitude
  • Wenner/Esch (1960s) - Sound (explains how they convey info in dark)
  • Problem - People thought bees couldn’t hear
  • Wenner - Smell, not sound

Paragraph 3

• Paragraph note
  • More on explanations; Author’s explanation
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, points of intersection, and the author's attitude
  • Gould - Not smell (can tell bees to go to a place they haven’t been)
  • Kirchner/Michelsen (Author) - Sound does play a role
  • (We know the Author agrees because she uses “showed” to talk about the research here, which implies agreement)

Paragraph 1

• Paragraph note
  • Phenomenon - Animal communication (different types)
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, points of intersection, and the author's attitude
  • Generalization - All animals communicate (List)
  • Addendum - Some do so symbolically (List)
  • Example - SCM - Verve monkeys (different calls for different predators)

Paragraph 2

• Paragraph note
  • Honeybee dance - communication type
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, points of intersection, and the author's attitude
  • von Frisch - Bees dance to give info about food
  • Wenner - Bees use smell (wrong)

Paragraph 3

• Paragraph note
  • More on bee communication
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, points of intersection, and the author's attitude
  • Bees don’t blindly follow dances
  • Gould - Experiment - Flowers in boat - Bees didn’t go because flowers don’t grow in lakes

Main Points:

Passage A - While many explanations have been put forward on how bee dances convey the location of food to other bees, Kirchner and Michelsen have proved that sound plays an essential role.

Passage B - While all animals communicate, some do so symbolically, including vervet monkeys and honeybees.

Passage A:

• Lines 1-3 - Phenomenon
• Lines 16-20 - Explanation, with reason for dismissal
• Lines 21-23 - Another explanation
• Lines 26-29 - Second explanation eliminated
• Lines 31-33 - First explanation shown to be correct

Passage B:

• Line 35 - Generalization
• Lines 37-38 - Phenomenon
• Lines 46-48 - Example of phenomenon
• Lines 51-52 - Second example of phenomenon
• Lines 56-58 - Another aspect of second example

Both passages are strongly related, in that both deal with communication between animals. Passage A deals with just one example of this phenomenon (bees), while Passage B brings up two (monkeys and bees) - however, the example from Passage A is also one of the examples from Passage B. That said, they do have different foci. Passage A is interested in explaining the basis for the phenomenon - how bees communicate the location of food to others (Lines 11-12). Passage B, on the other hand, is interested in showing that its examples demonstrate that animals communicate symbolically instead of literally or directly (Lines 37-38). So while the two do deal with some of the same content, they make very different arguments about it.

Phenomenon/Explanation or Question/Answer (Passage A) - Passage A falls into one of the most common Meta-Structures for Science passages - the Phenomenon/Explanation structure (which can also be viewed as a Question/Answer structure, where the question is about the phenomenon and the explanation the answer). Here, the Author specifically refers to “questions” that still remained about the phenomenon, so answers could use language associated with either Meta-Structure. In any case, the passage brings up the phenomenon of honeybees communicating the location of food sources, and it spends the rest of the passage exploring how they do so. When that’s the case, the Author’s preferred explanation makes up the main point. Here, the Author agrees with the explanation put forward by Kirchner and Michelsen (since she says they “showed” instead of something like they “argued” or “hypothesizes”) - sounds emitted during a dance play an essential role in this communication.

Generalization/Examples (Passage B) - Passage B starts with two generalizations. First, all animals communicate. This, however, is then pivoted away from to the generalization that the Author spends the rest of the passage exploring examples of - that some animals communicate symbolically. He then spends the rest of the passage discussing two examples of symbolic communication - vervet monkeys in Paragraph 1 and honeybees in Paragraphs 2 and 3.

Lists (Passage B) - Right up top, the Author of Passage B provides lists of examples of each type of communication (basic and symbolic). These are a very limited part of his passage, though, so we should expect at most one question on them. It’s also important to note that bees show up on both lists and as a more involved example later in the passage.

Passages A and B bring up the same experts when discussing the bee example, but they bring up different information about them. It’ll be important to keep what details show up in which passage when we’re approaching any question that’s about a specific passage instead of both passages together.