The U.S. economy faces a dangerous new threat. Netflix binge-watching
has a debilitating effect on the productivity of the American workforce. A
study of one Fortune 500 company found that 40 percent of employees
who had watched the entire second season of Stranger Things after its
midnight release chose to not go to work after they finished the final
episode at about 1:00 p.m. Those who showed up late to the office
compiled 80 percent fewer spreadsheet entries than their daily average.
The nationwide effect of binge-watching on productivity is not yet known,
but it’s not looking good.Which of the following pieces of evidence could be cited in the
passage to support the author’s argument?
A) Netflix, Inc., has been targeted by the anti-streaming activist group
Get Off Your Couch in a number of pending lawsuits.
B) Americans in suburban communities spend 28 percent more time
watching Netflix than those in large cities.*
*Untrue. I’ve lived in both a suburb and a city. Watching Netflix for unhealthy amounts of time is universal.
—SamanthaC) A 2017 poll of Netflix subscribers found that Stranger Things was
binge-watched at a 21 percent greater rate than Orange Is the New
Black, another Netflix Original Series.
D) 120 million Americans binge-watched at least half of a TV season
in 2017, a 74 percent increase from the previous year.The answer is D. This choice gives the reader more information about the
general increase in binge-watching, which is more relevant to the argument
being made in the paragraph—increased binge-watching leads to less work—
than the fact that Netflix is being sued (choice A), or that more binge-watching
occurs in some places rather than others (choice B) or that some shows are more
binge-watched than others (choice C).
Similarly, some questions will ask you whether an argument can be improved
by adding or removing a particular sentence.
Archaeologists have been conducting excavations of Egypt’s Great
Pyramids and their surroundings for centuries, but they continue to make
new discoveries each year. In 2016, an archaeological dig near the three
enormous pyramids uncovered what is believed to be the predecessor of