PrepTest 126

Incorrect. There are two issues with this answer. First, it still discusses students, so it doesn't support the contention that this trend plays out in other groups that can choose between reading online and reading in print. Second, it's too weak— "several" students could be 5 out of 200 students in their classes.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Strengthen

Stimulus Summary:
Most of a professor's students printed out the material that was distributed via computer, so digital books won't make printed books obsolete.

Answer Anticipation:
Whenever an argument is based on a single example, the conclusion needs to be weak enough that a single example is sufficient to support it. That's not the case here, where one class worth of students is used to draw a conclusion about the entire reading public.

As such, we should be looking for answers that show the results from this one class are representative generally. That's going to require more than a few other students also printing out their papers—there needs to be evidence that this trend is broad and exists outside of this subset of individuals.

Answer Explanation:
This answer adds significant weight to the argument by bringing up a wide range of studies that "consistently" show computer users (not just students) do the same thing as these students—print out long documents to read. By bringing up many examples that all show the same pattern among a much wider group, this answer establishes that the sample in question is more likely to be representative, thus strengthening the argument.

Key Takeaway:
Whenever an argument bases a generalization on a single instance, there's a flaw in that reasoning. The correct answer will likely deal with whether the cited instance is representative.

Incorrect. This answer doesn't discuss whether the same is true of printed materials. It also only applies to "[s]ome" people, which isn't enough to establish a general pattern.

Incorrect. While scanning technology is very poor, it might get better. Also, editors might carefully read all scanned documents. This doesn't support the contention that ebooks won't ever replace printed books, just that there's a current problem that might prevent their immediate adoption.

Incorrect. The stimulus is about electronic documents vs. printed ones, so books on tape and movies of books are out of scope.