Answer the question in the most precise way possible. Read literally!
Let’s try one.
The question of unequal pay for women draws on many other broader social issues. 4
4.The writer is considering deleting the phrase of unequal pay for women from the
preceding sentence. Should this phrase be kept or deleted?
A) Kept, because removing it would remove a crucial piece of information from this
part of the sentence.
B) Kept, because it reminds the reader of social injustice in the modern world.
C) Deleted, because it wrongly implies that there is a disparity between what women
and men are paid.
D) Deleted, because it gives information that has no bearing on this particular text.
Here’s How to Crack It
This question asks whether we should keep or delete the phrase of unequal pay for women. Without that
phrase, the sentence reads, The question draws on many other broader social issues. Because nothing in
this sentence or any of the previous ones specifies what this question might be, we should keep the
phrase. We want to be as precise as possible!
And, as (A) says, we want to keep the phrase because it is crucial to clarifying precisely what the
question is. Choice (B) is a little too grandiose a reason to keep the phrase, especially when the whole
passage is about the particular injustice of the gender pay gap. Choice (A) is the correct answer.
Let’s try another.
The gender disparities persist in areas other than pay. It is a kind of open secret, for instance,
that women have had the right to vote in the United States for less than a century. 5 There is a
long history of misogyny written into the very cultural and social fabric of the United States.
5.At this point, the writer is considering adding the following true statement:
The year that women’s suffrage became legal in the
United States was also the year that the American
Football League was formed under the leadership of Jim
Thorpe.