The 'Although' That Flips a Recommendation
A test-taker is working on a two-blank Text Completion: 'Although the committee’s report was ostensibly about budget transparency, its recommendations were so ___ that even members who favored the new accounting system found them ___.' Blank (i) options: (A) modest (B) sweeping (C) ambiguous. Blank (ii) options: (D) easy to defend (E) hard to accept (F) irrelevant. The test-taker has eliminated A and D, leaving B or C for blank (i) and E or F for blank (ii). She is leaning toward C/E because 'ambiguous' can make recommendations hard to accept.
1. Which pair is correct, and what does 'even members who favored the new accounting system' contribute?
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B/E. The 'Although' sets up a contrast: the report was ostensibly limited to budget transparency, yet its recommendations were sweeping-broad in scope. The phrase 'even members who favored...' raises the bar for blank (ii): if sympathetic members found the recommendations hard to accept, the objection is stronger than if opponents did. C/E fails because 'ambiguous' does not contrast with 'ostensibly about budget transparency'; ambiguity is not a scope expansion, and it does not explain why supporters specifically would balk.
2. Why is F ('irrelevant') less defensible than E, given that sweeping recommendations might seem irrelevant to a budget-transparency report?
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F is tempting because sweeping recommendations could stray from the report’s ostensible topic. But 'found them irrelevant' would mean the supporters judged the recommendations unrelated to their concerns; the sentence’s 'even' implies a stronger, more personal reaction-recommendations so broad that even allies could not endorse them. E preserves the contrast between ostensible scope and actual reach; F shifts the issue to topic relevance, which the first clause already covers.