Examkin

Question

Difficulty: MediumSupporting Claims with Evidence and Details

Passage:

[1] Growing up, I often watched my grandmother hunch over her drafting table, carefully drawing maps for the state geological survey. [2] She always insisted that mapmaking was far more than a technical exercise in recording coordinates. [3] Instead, she viewed cartography as a highly subjective art form that required a designer's eye to decide what to emphasize and what to omit. [4] To represent a landscape, a mapmaker must make choices about color, line weight, and labels. [5] She believed that a map could never be completely objective because it was ultimately a human interpretation of the land.

Question:

The writer wants to revise Sentence 4 to provide the most specific, concrete visual details that illustrate the mapmaker's subjective artistic choices. Which option best accomplishes this goal?

  1. To represent a rugged coastline, a mapmaker might paint the ocean a deep indigo and thicken the shoreline's ink boundary to convey a sense of rocky isolation.Answer
  2. B
    To represent a landscape, a mapmaker must make decisions between various colors and line weights, which are essential elements of map design.
  3. C
    Mapmakers traditionally use tools like ink pens and drafting compasses to ensure that their final drawings are clean and neat.
  4. D
    To represent a landscape; a mapmaker chooses colors like green for forests and blue for rivers.

Answer

The correct option is the one that details a mapmaker painting the ocean a deep indigo and thickening the shoreline's boundary with ink to convey a sense of rocky isolation.
The correct answer provides concrete visual details—such as painting the ocean a deep indigo and thickening the shoreline's boundary with ink—which directly illustrate the specific artistic choices a mapmaker makes to convey a feeling like rocky isolation. This directly supports the paragraph's claim that mapmaking is a subjective art of decision-making.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the central claim of the paragraph.
The paragraph argues that mapmaking is a subjective art of decision-making rather than a purely objective technical process.
The correct revision must align with and support this central thesis.
2
Determine the specific rhetorical goal requested in the prompt.
The prompt asks for 'specific, concrete visual details' that illustrate the mapmaker's 'subjective artistic choices.'
This allows filtering out options that are grammatically correct but too vague or off-topic.
3
Evaluate the choices to find the one with the most concrete, sensory-based visual details.
The option describing painting the ocean a deep indigo and thickening ink boundaries contains highly specific visual imagery that illustrates a design choice, whereas the other options are either grammatically incorrect, describe tools generally, or remain vague.
Selecting the option with the most sensory details ensures compliance with the visual details constraint.

Key Concept

Supporting Claims with Evidence and Details

Alternative Method

Evaluate the choices by scanning for concrete nouns and sensory adjectives (e.g., 'rugged,' 'indigo,' 'ink') versus abstract nouns (e.g., 'decisions,' 'elements,' 'tools'). This allows you to quickly isolate the option that provides the most vivid visual detail.
Estimated Time:1m 0s
Rate this question

Topics

Supporting Claims with Evidence and Details

More questions from this topic