PrepTest 126

Incorrect. This answer is the negation of the conditional premise (or the reversal, depending on how you diagrammed it), so it's not necessary for the argument to hold together.

Incorrect. The argument brings up emotionally engaging readers about the imaginary world of the novel, not engaging their imaginations, so this answer is out of scope. And if we ignore that shift, this answer is essentially a restatement of the first sentence.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Strengthen with Necessary Premise

Stimulus Summary:
not Most readers emotionally engaged with world → not Highest quality novelNarrative shifts tend to make readers focus on the author
Therefore - Narrative shifts detract from the quality of a novel

Answer Anticipation:
Strengthen with Sufficient Premise questions are much more likely to have conditional logic than Necessary Premise questions, but it's not unheard of for it to show up in this question type. When it shows up, you should still diagram it out and work through the diagram!

Note here that the other statements aren't really conditional, but they still draw connections between concepts. That final premise, for instance, says that one thing "tend[s] to" make another happen—that's not purely conditional since it's not a guarantee. However, since the stimulus has a lot of overlapping terms, it's likely that we're missing a connection between a term in the premises and one in the conclusion, or between two premises, so that's where we should focus our work.

As such, let's look at the conclusion to see if there's a new term there that needs to be connected to a premise. The narrative shifts from the conclusion are featured in that final statement ("such shifts"), so that's not a new term. While the second half of the conclusion—detracting from the merit of a work—can appear to be a new term, there's actually a term in the premises that guarantees that's the case—not Highest quality novel. If something isn't of the highest quality, then something must have detracted from that quality; if something detracts from the quality of a work, it can't be of the highest quality. So the concepts in the conclusion are already supported—the gap in this argument must be between two premises.

Mapping out the argument and plugging in the connections to the conclusions in the premises, we get:
Narrative shifts → Tend to make readers focus on the author → ??? → not Most readers emotionally engaged with world → not Highest quality novel
With the argument laid out, we can see where the missing piece is:
Tend to make readers focus on the author → not Most emotionally engaged with world

So the argument is assuming that if readers are focused on the author, they're not emotionally engaged with the world of the novel. Note that since we "fudged" the conditional logic here (it wasn't really conditional, but we used that notation to track the connections), the contrapositive isn't a viable answer, so we don't need to anticipate it!

Answer Explanation:
This answer reflects our anticipation. Narrative shifts draw focus to the author, which this answer establishes prevents emotional engagement. The first premise states that this guarantees the novel isn't of the highest quality—so something must have detracted from the quality, justifying the conclusion. If most readers can become emotionally engaged with a novel even if they focus on the author, the narrative shifts don't necessarily detract from the quality of a novel, and the argument falls apart. This answer is necessary for the argument to work.

Key Takeaway:
Even if the language isn't purely conditional, if an argument builds by repeating statements that are clearly building together, map out those connections and see what's missing!

Incorrect. This answer doesn't necessarily deal with shifts in that point of view, which is what the argument is about, so this answer is incorrect.

Incorrect. These shifts can both serve a literary purpose and detract from the quality of the work, so this answer isn't required for the argument to work. (It's possible an author sacrifices quality to serve a specific literary purpose.)