Reading: a hedged claim and an option that says it too strongly
A student is working on a single-question passage:
“For decades, urban foxes in Britain were assumed to be rural animals that had strayed into cities. A Bristol team that tracked 40 city foxes now reports that urban foxes are, on average, bolder near people and begin foraging earlier in the evening than rural foxes. The team stresses that all its measurements come from a single city and that the differences may reflect the animals' adjustment to human schedules rather than any inherited change.”
Question: What can be inferred from the passage? A. Urban foxes belong to a different species from rural foxes. B. Urban foxes have evolved to become bolder than rural foxes. C. Foxes in one city behaved differently from rural foxes, possibly by adjusting. D. Rural foxes are becoming tamer as cities expand.
The student narrows to B and C, then picks B because “C says almost nothing - B is just C said properly”.
1. Choose between B and C, and justify the choice by pointing at specific words in the passage.
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C. B fails on three separate hedges, any one of which is fatal:
- “may reflect ... adjustment ... rather than any inherited change” - the team explicitly doubts the inherited explanation, and “evolved” asserts exactly that. B contradicts the source, it does not merely exaggerate it.
- “on average” - a measured tendency across 40 animals, not a fixed species trait.
- “a single city” - the team itself limits generalisation, so “urban foxes” as a whole is out of scope.
C keeps all three limits: one city, differed, possibly by adjusting. It is the weaker sentence, and that is the point - an inference may not be bolder than its evidence.
A and D are unsupported in the other direction (A invents a species difference; D invents a trend over time and reverses the direction of change).
2. The student's defence is: “the passage does say bolder, so B is only C said with confidence.” How would you answer that in one test?
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Apply a word-swap test: replace the option's strongest word with the passage's own word and see whether the meaning survives.
- B: “have evolved” → passage: “adjustment ... rather than any inherited change”. Swap gives “have adjusted rather than evolved” - which is the opposite of B. Fails.
- C: “behaved differently ... possibly by adjusting” → passage: “differed ... may reflect adjustment”. Swap changes nothing. Holds.
So B is not C with confidence; confidence is precisely what turns a supported claim into an unsupported one. In this question type, strength is not free variation: an option's certainty level is itself part of its content, and the exam routinely builds the tempting distractor as right topic + right direction + wrong certainty. When two options survive elimination, prefer the one whose modal and quantifier words can each be matched to a word in the text.
3. What single sentence could be added to the passage that would make B the better answer?
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Something that supplies the evidence B currently lacks - inheritance, across more than one place and more than one generation. For example:
“A follow-up study comparing city and rural populations in six countries found that the offspring of city foxes were bolder even when raised in identical enclosures, a difference the authors attribute to inherited change.”
This attacks each limitation in turn: “six countries” removes the single-city cap, “offspring ... raised in identical enclosures” removes the adjustment explanation, and the direction is now inherited. Note that “on average” would still survive - which is why B would then be acceptable but still not identical in force to a claim about every fox.
Doing this exercise once per passage is a fast way to learn what a distractor is missing: name the sentences the passage would need in order to license it.