Sentence Insertion and the Pronoun 'This'
Item 38 asks where the sentence 'This is precisely why some stores deliberately stock fewer varieties than they could.' belongs in a passage about choice overload. The passage reads: (1) A field experiment set up a tasting table with 24 jams, then with 6. (2) The larger display drew more browsers but far fewer buyers. (3) Researchers explained that abundant options raise comparison costs and make people postpone decisions. (4) [blank]. (5) The six-jam table, by contrast, converted browsers into buyers at a much higher rate. The student is torn between (3) and (4). At (3), 'This' could refer to the 24-jam result; at (4), it follows the explanation. He notices that the sentence after (4) begins 'The six-jam table, by contrast,' which suggests a contrast is already active. He has two minutes for this item and has already spent four.
1. Which slot is correct, and what does the pronoun 'This' require?
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Choose (4). The inserted sentence begins 'This is precisely why,' so 'This' must refer to a causal explanation, not to a result. At (4), it follows the researchers' explanation that abundant options raise comparison costs and make people postpone decisions; 'stock fewer varieties' is the practical implication of that explanation. At (3), 'This' would refer to the 24-jam result - the larger display drew more browsers but fewer buyers - which is an outcome, not a reason. The phrase 'precisely why' demands a mechanism, and the mechanism appears only in the original sentence (3). The following 'by contrast' then contrasts the six-jam table with the 24-jam table, while the inserted sentence bridges explanation and practice. Test both slots by reading the sentence before and after: only (4) gives 'This' a clear antecedent and preserves the paragraph's result, explanation, implication, contrast order.
2. What coherence error does choosing (3) create?
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At (3), the paragraph would claim that stores stock fewer varieties because the larger display drew more browsers but fewer buyers. That is a result, not a reason; the actual reason - comparison costs and postponement - would arrive after the claim it is supposed to support. The original explanation would then begin with 'Researchers explained that,' but there would be nothing for them to explain except the store practice, which reverses the logic. The paragraph would also lose its forward link: 'The six-jam table, by contrast' needs the general practice as a bridge, and without it the contrast jumps backward over two sentences. The error is not grammatical; it is discourse-level. Insertion items reward pronoun tracking and paragraph-order logic, not sentence-level plausibility.