The Digital Native Revisited
You are on Reading Part 5. The passage is a 420-word review of a book arguing that today's students are 'digital natives' who learn differently. The reviewer describes a lecture in which the projector failed and the lecturer taught fluently from memory. She then cites a survey of 1,200 undergraduates showing no correlation between hours online and reported ease with academic research. In the next paragraph she writes, 'None of this is to deny that some students are extraordinarily adept at navigating digital archives.' The final paragraph calls the book's central claim 'seductive but under-evidenced'. One question asks for the reviewer's attitude to the book's central claim; another asks for the function of the survey. You marked 'hostile' because of the phrase 'under-evidenced' and because the reviewer keeps criticising the book. You have 12 minutes left for this part and two more questions to check.
1. Why is 'hostile' too strong? Use the passage's structure and at least two specific signals.
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Hostile implies global rejection, but the reviewer concedes: 'None of this is to deny that some students are extraordinarily adept at navigating digital archives.' That concession keeps the attitude within scepticism, not hostility. The phrase 'seductive but under-evidenced' criticises the evidence rather than the book's value; 'seductive' even acknowledges appeal. The anecdote about the lecturer teaching without a projector functions as a counter-example to the claim that digital exposure fundamentally changes learning, but it is offered as an illustration, not as proof of bad faith. At C2, attitude questions reward calibrated labels: sceptical, critical but not dismissive, cautiously qualified. Hostile overreads the critical adjectives and ignores the concession that the reviewer deliberately places after the evidence.
2. What is the function of the survey of 1,200 undergraduates, and how is it different from the anecdote?
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The survey supplies the empirical warrant for the reviewer's scepticism: it generalises a null relationship between hours online and ease with academic research across a stated sample. Its function is evidential, and the number 1,200 makes the scepticism look measured rather than impressionistic. The anecdote is illustrative and particular: one lecturer, one failed projector. It dramatises the gap between the 'digital native' label and observable competence, but it cannot support a general claim. The reviewer uses the anecdote to engage the reader and the survey to justify the critique. A function question asks about that division of labour, not about which paragraph contains the topic sentence.
3. How should you answer a 'function of the paragraph' question without relying on the first sentence?
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Read the paragraph's final sentence and the paragraph that follows, because function is often signalled by what the next paragraph does with the material. Ask: does this paragraph introduce a counter-claim, provide evidence, concede a point, or qualify the previous claim? Track discourse markers ('None of this is to deny', 'Yet', 'Indeed') and the shift in verb type - descriptive verbs (describes, cites) versus evaluative verbs (undermines, concedes). In this passage, the survey paragraph follows an anecdote, so its function is to move from illustration to evidence. Topic sentences can mislead because C2 passages often begin with a vivid detail and place the rhetorical job in the final clause.