Reading comp PrepTest 141 · Section 3 · Question 21

Passage SummaryTopic: Legal Studies

Paragraph 1

• Paragraph note
  • Central topic - two views on it (lay person and expert); Author sides with experts
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
  • Central question - When should the government spend resources to protect people from risky behavior?
  • Public - When the risk is involuntary (Example - flying) not when it's voluntary (Example - Mountain climbing)
  • Experts - Take aggregate number of lives saved into consideration
  • Author - "Voluntariness" is a little arbitrary and thus isn't useful

Paragraph 2

• Paragraph note
  • Author's first point - voluntary is hard to determine
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
  • Clear-cut concession - Asteroid collision
  • Most other cases - Degrees of voluntariness
  • Example - Flying - plane crash is involuntary, but deciding to fly and on which airline is voluntary

Paragraph 3

• Paragraph note
  • Author's second point - "voluntary" shows opinion on activity; summary of viewpoint
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
  • Author - When someone doesn't approve of activity, see it as voluntary
  • Example - Skydiving (voluntary/won't pay for)
  • Example - Firefighting (will pay for despite being voluntary)
  • Summary - Regulators should understand reasons behind these judgments

Paragraph 4

• Paragraph note
  • Author's recommendation
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
  • Overall - Save as many lives as possible with available resources
  • Exceptions - What's behind the public's objection and characterization of activity as voluntary?

Main Point:
The public's conclusion that certain actions are voluntary while others aren't has problems, and thus rather than using that for setting government policies towards risks, it should be based on how many lives are saved.

Key Lines:
Lines 6-8 - The Public's view is stated
Lines 11-13 - The view of Experts is stated
Lines 14-19 - The Author's opinion on the Public's view
Lines 20-21 - The Author's first objection to the Public's view
Lines 33-35 - The Author's second objection to the Public's view
Liens 44-46 - The Author's summary
Lines 47-49 - The Author's recommendation
Lines 50-54 - Exceptions to the Author's recommendation

Meta-Structure:
List - This passage has a list of two reasons that the Author believes the Public's view on government risk management policy is wrong. One takes up each of Paragraphs 2 and 3.

Examples - This passage is full of examples, from flying to mountain climbing to asteroids to skydiving to firefighting. As such, we should expect questions about these examples, and so it's important that we noted where each one showed up. Additionally, one of the examples repeats—flying is brought up in the opening paragraph and then again in the Author's exploration of what it means for an action to be voluntary, so that example might be particularly important.

Last Thoughts:
For a Passage 4, this one is relatively straightforward, so let's be sure to finish up our analysis of the passage quickly and leave plenty of time for the questions—since the structure and viewpoint isn't hard to spot, there will likely be some tricky questions that focus on details.