Lesson: Reading Comprehension Basic - 25t01

The RC Question: Explicit Text

Choose an answer for the following Explicit Text question. Designate each of the four you don't choose as one or a combination of the five common wrong answer types: Au Contraire, Outside the Scope, Distortion, Extreme, and Faulty Use of Detail.

	The lack of a previous authoritarian or dictatorial rule
	Academic institutions providing intellectual support for the directives of the state
	A mechanism for interchange between corporations and workers
	An exclusive focus on the conventional elements of a democratic system
	A pluralistic approach to political parties

Our Roadmap tells us that the necessary conditions for democracy are spelled out in paragraphs 3 and 4, so that's where to focus your attention. Correct choice (3) comes from the latter: There we find out that no effective democracy lacks a way to deal with labor disputes, especially between large powerful corporations and representatives of the workers. Choice (3) is a fine paraphrase of this.

How did you do characterizing the wrong choices?

(1): Faulty Use Of Detail/Distortion. Authoritarian and dictatorial rule is mentioned in paragraph 2, which discusses the challenge to, not prerequisites for, democracy. Furthermore, while it may be tough for the Asian countries in question to achieve democracy, it distorts the author's reasoning to say that democracy requires an utter lack of previous authoritarian rule. The author seems to think it can be done, albeit with some difficulty.

(2): Au Contraire. Universities need to be "free standing" and "unimpeded in providing critical perspectives on state and society." Choice (2) suggests the exact opposite, that academia must be beholden to the state.

(4): Extreme/Au Contraire. "Exclusive focus" constitutes the extreme part; that's going way too far. So far, in fact, as to contradict the assertion in paragraph 4 that there are "institutions and institutional complexes" beyond the conventional ones that are necessary for effective democracy.

(5): Outside The Scope. "Pluralism" drops in from outer space. Political parties are mentioned only once; what kind they may be is not a concern of the present author.

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