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Difficulty: MediumEvaluating Relevance for Adding or Deleting Content

Located deep inside a sandstone mountain on a remote Norwegian island, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault serves as a fail-safe backup for the world's crop biodiversity. The facility is built to withstand natural disasters and power failures, ensuring the safety of millions of seed samples. [1] Svalbard, an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, is home to more polar bears than people. In the event of a global catastrophe, scientists could retrieve these genetic samples to restore vital crops. Consequently, the vault represents a critical insurance policy for global food security.

The writer is considering deleting the underlined sentence from the paragraph. Should this sentence be deleted?

  1. Yes, because it introduces a detail about Svalbard's wildlife that is tangential to the paragraph's focus on the seed vault.Answer
  2. B
    Yes, because it contradicts the paragraph's assertion that Svalbard is completely uninhabited by humans.
  3. C
    No, because it provides essential geographic context that explains why Svalbard's climate is suitable for seed preservation.
  4. D
    No, because it supports the paragraph's focus on biodiversity by introducing another type of species found in the region.

Answer

Yes, because it introduces a detail about Svalbard's wildlife that is tangential to the paragraph's focus on the seed vault.
The option recommending deletion because it introduces a detail about Svalbard's wildlife is correct because the paragraph is specifically focused on the purpose, design, and function of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The underlined sentence discusses the archipelago's polar bear population, which is a tangential detail that interrupts the focus on crop preservation and agricultural security. Therefore, the sentence should be deleted.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the main focus of the paragraph.
The paragraph describes the purpose, durability, and function of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in safeguarding crop biodiversity.
Understanding the paragraph's topic is necessary to evaluate whether any single sentence contributes to that topic.
2
Evaluate the relevance of the underlined sentence to the paragraph's focus.
The underlined sentence discusses the relative population of polar bears to humans on Svalbard. This detail is about local wildlife and human geography, which does not relate to the agricultural function of the seed vault.
Determining relevance requires checking if the sentence supports the main idea or interrupts the flow with tangential information.
3
Determine whether the sentence should be kept or deleted, and select the correct justification.
Since the sentence is irrelevant, it should be deleted. The justification must highlight that the information is tangential to the main topic of the seed vault, making the option stating it is tangential the correct choice.
Both the decision (delete) and the reason (tangential detail) must align to form the correct answer.

Key Concept

Evaluating Relevance for Adding or Deleting Content
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Topics

Evaluating Relevance for Adding or Deleting Content

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