True, False or Not Given: The Museum Funding Trap
Kai is answering True/False/Not Given questions on a passage about museum funding. The passage says: 'The committee rejected a flat fee for all visitors. It recommended that tourists pay an entrance fee while local residents enter free. The committee estimated that tourist fees would offset part of the museum's annual deficit.' Question 21: 'The committee recommended that all visitors pay an entrance fee.' Question 22: 'The committee expected tourist fees to cover the museum's entire deficit.' Question 23: 'The committee consulted local residents before making its recommendation.' Kai marks 21 False, 22 True, 23 False. He explains that museums usually consult residents and that 'part of' probably means 'most of.' He has six minutes left and eight questions to go. He has not underlined any evidence in the passage, and he changes two earlier answers on a hunch.
1. Mark questions 21–23 and justify each using only the passage.
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21 is False. The statement says the committee recommended that all visitors pay. The passage says the committee rejected a flat fee for all visitors and recommended that tourists pay while residents enter free. This is a direct contradiction, not a gap.
22 is False. The statement says tourist fees would cover the entire deficit. The passage says they would offset part of the deficit. 'Part of' and 'entire' are incompatible quantities, so the statement is contradicted. Kai's reasoning that 'part of' probably means 'most of' is outside knowledge, and even 'most of' would not equal 'entire'.
23 is Not Given. The passage says nothing about consultation with local residents. Kai marks it False because he assumes museums usually consult. That is plausible in the real world but irrelevant: Not Given means the passage provides no evidence either way. The key distinction is that False requires a contradiction, while Not Given requires only silence. His method is producing errors because he is testing the statements against plausibility rather than against the text.
2. Explain why Kai's method produces errors and give a three-step routine for True/False/Not Given.
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Kai is using world knowledge and probability instead of textual evidence. That works occasionally, but it fails precisely where the test is designed to discriminate: quantifiers such as 'all', 'entire' and 'part of', and relationships such as who consulted whom. He also does not underline evidence, so when he changes answers on a hunch he has nothing to check against. Hunches are especially unreliable in Not Given items, because the absence of evidence feels like falsity.
A reliable three-step routine is: 1) Analyse the statement - identify the agent, the action, the quantity and any time or condition. 2) Locate the evidence - find the sentence that mentions the same agent and action, and underline it. 3) Compare exactly - if the passage matches the statement, True; if it contradicts it, False; if the passage does not address that specific relationship, Not Given. A useful check for Not Given is to ask, 'Could I prove this statement false from the passage?' If not, and I also cannot prove it true, it is Not Given. He should not change an answer unless he can point to the underlined sentence that justifies the change.
3. With six minutes and eight questions left, what should he do?
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He should stop changing answers without evidence and switch to a time-controlled routine. Eight questions in six minutes allows about 45 seconds each. He should spend the first 30–35 seconds locating evidence and the last 10 seconds deciding and recording. Questions that contain names, dates or numbers are usually faster, so he should do those first. He should not re-read the whole passage; he should scan for the key agent or quantity in each statement.
For any item where he finds no evidence after about 30 seconds, he should make a reasoned choice and move on: Not Given is a candidate, but it should not be an automatic default, because some statements are contradicted by a sentence he has not found. He should also make sure every answer is on the answer sheet, since an unrecorded answer scores zero. Finally, he should stop the hunch-based changes. If he has time at the end, he should only revisit an answer when he can point to a specific line. The judgement call is to protect completed answers and secure the easy marks rather than chase perfect certainty on all eight.