PrepTest 141, Section 2, 21. Most of the students who took Spanish 101…

How will the right answer fit in terms of support and conclusion?

Only the right answer will be a conclusion that’s guaranteed by support in the passage. The guaranteed thing is usually extra though, so focus on whether answers are supported by the passage at all and you’ll be good to go.

Highlight the main conclusion in the passage, if there is one:

There’s no conclusion in the passage. The right answer will be the conclusion.

[SUPPORT]. However, [SUPPORT].

On a lot of these you might not know whether a statement is support or background until you see the answers. Focus on eliminating any answers that bring in something new or use stronger wording than the passage uses.

For the advanced folks, clearly the two statements are talking about completely separate groups of students. There can’t be any overlap between people who “attended every class” and people who “missed at least one class session”. So it must be true that “most of the students” did NOT get “a grade lower than B minus”.

Map the wording of the answers to the wording of the passage:

(A) …received a grade of A minus or higher…

Whoa there. The only line in the sand in the passage is at B minus. We couldn’t possibly know anything about students who got “A minus or higher”

(B) …students who missed at least one class session received a grade lower than B minus.

Sucker bet! The passage says this the other way around. You know you can’t just reverse the groups like that. Just because most people in the room are Americans doesn’t mean most Americans are in the room. Right?

(C) Most of the students received a grade higher than B minus.

Gosh, this is almost unfair. But if you’re really careful about checking the wording, you’ll see the passage tells us most students did NOT get lower than B minus. But maybe every one of them actually got a B minus. Totally possible. So this answer can’t be “properly inferred”.

(D) At least one student…

This wording would map to a statement like “not all students”, but we only see “most of the students” and “each student” in the passage. That’s a red flag for sure. Also, in the passage the higher grade folks are the ones who showed up to class all the time. We have no way of connecting “B minus or higher” with “missed one or more class sessions” based on the passage.

(E) More than half of the students received a grade of B minus or higher.

All of this maps nicely, as long as you confirm that “B minus or higher” definitely includes everybody who’s not in the “lower than B minus” group. Of course, this also perfectly matches the conclusion we deduced from the passage before checking the answers.

(E) is the correct answer.

Common patterns in this question: Make sure you’re clear that “properly inferred” is another way to say must be true. That’s how you know the right answer is a conclusion guaranteed by support in the passage.