Answer Choices
Yes, because it reinforces the passage’s main point about the employability of philosophy majors.
Yes, because it acknowledges a common counterargument to the passage’s central claim.
No, because it blurs the paragraph’s focus by introducing a new idea that goes unexplained.
No, because it undermines the passage’s claim about the employability of philosophy majors.
Explanation for Question 42 From the Writing Section on the Official Sat Practice Test 1
No question 42 is asking us if we should add the sentence that says 2 the ancient Greek philosopher, Plato, for example, 3 wrote many of his works in the form of dialogues. 4 So here, we're talking about Plato and we're talking about dialogues. 5 So let's look back in this paragraph and see if that is on topic 6 or if we're actually talking about something else. 7 So here we talk about law and business and how that's useful for philosophy 8 and how it's also useful in engineering. We talk about transferable skills across professions. 9 So we can see here, we're not talking about grief, philosophers at all, 10 let alone Plato, right? So this sentence is extremely off topic. 11 And so anything that says it supports the main idea would be wrong, 12 right? Because the detail actually has no connection to the main idea. 13 So AA is going to be no good, right? 14 Because it says it reinforces the passages main claim. 15 Now B says, acknowledge a common counter-argument. 16 And similarly D says that undermines the main claim. 17 Now, again, this sentence here doesn't even address the main claim about employability 18 of philosophers, right? It doesn't even talk about why philosophers are good, 19 um, employees. And so it can't possibly be a counter-argument or undermine 20 if it doesn't even address the main claim right now, 21 if we look at, see what's left, it says it blurs the F the 22 focus by introducing a new idea that goes unexplained. 23 And so this is the best description, right? Because when it says new idea, 24 that goes unexplained, it's basically that describing that sentence as off topic, 25 which makes sense, because that sentence feels out of place in that paragraph. 26 And so our best answer here is going to be C.