Reading: Distinguishing a Difficulty from a Disappointment
Read this passage and answer the question.
Last month, Hana visited an indigo dyeing workshop in Tokushima with her class. The guide explained that indigo leaves must be fermented for about a hundred days before they can be used. Hana expected the dye to smell bad, but it did not. The workshop was quiet and cool. However, the work was harder than she had imagined: she had to stir the dye many times and keep her hands moving so the color would be even. At the end, she dyed a small cloth. It was not the deep blue she had seen in photos, but a lighter blue. The guide said the color would become darker as the cloth dried. Hana decided to wait one week before she judged her work.
Question: What did Hana find difficult about the workshop? A. The smell of the indigo B. Waiting for the cloth to dry C. Keeping her hands moving D. The light color of her cloth
A student chooses D and says, 'She was not happy with the color, so that was the difficult part.' The teacher asks the student to underline the sentence that answers the question.
1. Which choice is correct? Cite the sentence that supports it and explain why D does not answer the question asked.
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The correct choice is C. Keeping her hands moving.
The supporting sentence is: 'However, the work was harder than she had imagined: she had to stir the dye many times and keep her hands moving so the color would be even.' The colon after 'imagined' explains what was hard.
D describes Hana's reaction to the result, not the difficulty of the work. The passage says the cloth 'was not the deep blue she had seen in photos,' which is a disappointment, and then says the color would darken. Being unhappy with a result is not the same as finding a task difficult. The question word is 'difficult,' so the answer must describe effort or challenge, not the final color.
2. What is the function of 'However' in the passage, and how does ignoring it lead a reader toward A or B?
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'However' marks a contrast between Hana's expectations and the reality of the workshop. Before it, the passage says the workshop was quiet and cool and that the dye did not smell bad. After it, the passage introduces the real challenge: hard physical work. A reader who ignores the contrast may stop at the early positive details and choose A, even though the passage explicitly says 'but it did not' about the bad smell. B is also unsupported: Hana decides to wait one week, but the passage never says waiting was difficult. The contrast word tells the reader where the answer is likely to be.
3. What does 'it' refer to in 'but it did not'? Explain how resolving this pronoun helps decide whether A is a possible answer.
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In 'Hana expected the dye to smell bad, but it did not,' the pronoun 'it' refers to the dye. The auxiliary 'did not' stands for 'did not smell bad.' So the sentence means the dye did not have the bad smell Hana expected.
This matters because choice A says 'the smell of the indigo' was difficult. If 'it' referred to the workshop or the cloth, the sentence would be unclear. Once the reader attaches 'it' to 'the dye,' the passage directly cancels the idea that smell was a problem. Pronoun resolution is not a side skill; it decides whether a distractor is possible.