Reading: Which Cleanup Should the Class Join?
A reading passage in a third-year English class compares two volunteer events. Event A, the Sand Dunes Cleanup, had 80 volunteers working for 2 hours and collected 30 bags of litter. Event B, the Sea Turtle Beach Cleanup, had 40 volunteers working for 3 hours and collected 45 bags. The passage ends: 'The dunes event had more people, but the turtle beach had more litter per person. Next year our class should join the turtle beach event, because the problem there is bigger, not because the work is easier.' Yui says, 'So the dunes event was worse.' The teacher asks the class to test Yui's conclusion against the numbers and the author's wording. The passage does not say how much litter remained on either beach, how large each area is, or whether the events used the same bag size. The class must decide what can and cannot be inferred.
1. Calculate bags per volunteer and bags per hour for each event. Does the calculation support Yui's statement that 'the dunes event was worse'? Explain.
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Event A: 30 bags ÷ 80 volunteers = 0.375 bags per volunteer. 30 bags ÷ 2 hours = 15 bags per hour.
Event B: 45 bags ÷ 40 volunteers = 1.125 bags per volunteer. 45 bags ÷ 3 hours = 15 bags per hour.
The calculation supports only a limited claim. Event B collected more bags per volunteer, but the two events collected the same number of bags per hour. Yui's word 'worse' is not defined. If 'worse' means 'less litter per person,' the dunes event was lower. If 'worse' means 'less total litter removed,' the dunes event also collected fewer bags (30 versus 45). If 'worse' means 'less efficient per hour,' the events are equal. The author does not compare event quality at all; the author says the problem at the turtle beach is bigger. Yui turns a per-person figure into a global judgement, which the passage does not support. Bag size is also unknown, so comparing bag counts is not fully reliable.
2. Which sentence is the author's main claim, and which detail is a distractor? Explain how the phrase 'not because the work is easier' functions.
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The main claim is: 'Next year our class should join the turtle beach event, because the problem there is bigger.' The supporting detail is 'the turtle beach had more litter per person.' That detail supports the claim only if we assume that more litter per person means a bigger problem, which is plausible but not proven.
The distractor is the total number of bags, 45 versus 30, or the number of volunteers, 80 versus 40. A student may think 'more bags means the better event' or 'more volunteers means the worse event,' but the author is not ranking the events. The phrase 'not because the work is easier' blocks a wrong inference: the author is not saying the turtle beach is an easier place to volunteer. It anticipates that readers might think the recommendation is about convenience. By ruling that out, the author keeps the focus on the size of the problem, not on the comfort of the volunteers.
3. What one additional fact would most strengthen the author's claim that the turtle beach problem is bigger? Explain why that fact is stronger than the number of volunteers.
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The strongest additional fact would be the amount of litter still remaining on each beach after the cleanup, or the litter density per metre of beach. If the turtle beach still had much more litter left after 45 bags were removed, that would show the problem was larger than the cleanup could handle. Litter density would also control for beach size, which the passage does not give.
The number of volunteers is weaker because it measures effort, not the size of the problem. A beach with 80 volunteers may simply have had more people available. A beach with 40 volunteers may have collected more per person because the litter was denser or because the volunteers worked harder. Neither number tells us how much litter remained. Remaining litter or density directly measures the problem the author is describing.