PrepTest 141

Incorrect. First, there's no indication that the Student won't be able to find the book—the substantive portions of the stimulus are conditional. Second, even if the student can't find the book, she can still omit the quote and submit a worse paper—there's nothing forcing her to include the quote with an inaccurate citation. In fact, the Student sets out that being forced to include an inaccurate citation is sufficient for her to leave the quote out altogether, thus also eliminating the need for any type of citation.

Incorrect. There's no indication that failing to complete the research paper is on the table at all.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Facts

Question Type:
Argument Completion

Stimulus Summary:
not Find book → not Accurate citation
not Accurate citation → not Include quote
not Include quote → Paper is worse
Therefore: ?

Answer Anticipation:
This stimulus provides a chain of conditionals that all relate to what will happen if the Student can't find a given book: not Find book → not Accurate citation → not Include quote → Paper is worse. Since Argument Completion questions tend to bring all of the information from the stimulus together, the correct answer will likely represent the ends of the conditional chain:

If the student can't find the book, then her paper will be worse.
If the student's paper isn't worse, then she must have found the book.

Answer Explanation:
This answer brings together the conditional chain that the Student walks through in describing the impact of not finding the book. It maintains the conditional nature of the premises, as well, so it's the correct completion to the argument.

Key Takeaway:
When an Argument Completion question features a chain of conditionals, the correct answer will likely bring the whole chain together and bring up the end points. It can be helpful to take both the original chain and the contrapositive of just the endpoints in order to have the two most likely answer choices diagrammed out ahead of looking at the answer choices.

Incorrect. Without the book, the Student says she'll be "unable to include the quotation," so this answer choice is contradicted by the premises in the stimulus.

Incorrect. Similar to (B), there's no indication that failing to complete the research paper is on the table. Any answer that brings up failure to complete is out of scope.