A question about two texts tests how one writer would respond to another's view. Read the question to find who answers whom, then put the view and its reason in a few words. If a study answers a broad claim, compare the claim with the findings, including changes over time. Ask whether the findings reject the claim, limit it, or support a broader claim. A response needs the answering writer's own reason, not a stronger claim than the evidence supports.
Hints
- Hint 1
Find Text 1's claim about the mature community. What does the view say connects the first plants to that later community?
- Hint 2
Compare the first two years with year seven in Text 2. Track what happens to the differences between the grass-seeded and shrub-seeded plots.
- Hint 3
Check how far the final sentence goes. What does it say about the original seeding treatment, and how does it compare that treatment with slope and moisture?
Step-by-step
Compare the claim with the study over time
Step 1Pin down the view being answered
The question has the researchers in Text 2 answer Text 1's view, so let's pin down that view. What exactly are they answering? Text 1 says the mature community is strongly determined by the identity of those initial colonizers because early plants change soil and light in lasting ways. The claim is about lasting control, not only an early effect.
- Step 2
Read the early results
Did the first plants affect how the plots developed? In the first two years, the plots differed markedly: grass-seeded plots had fewer tree seedlings, while shrub-seeded plots had higher soil nitrogen. So the initial plants affected the early stages, including how many tree seedlings grew and what the soil was like.
- Step 3
Compare the later results and name the response
What happens to those differences by year seven? Tree cover, understory diversity, and most soil measurements were similar across all plots, so the early differences had largely faded. Slope and moisture explained more of the remaining variation than the seeding treatment, but explaining more doesn't mean determining the whole community. The researchers would accept the view only in part: the first plants mattered early, but their lasting control looks overstated.
- Step 4
Match the response to the findings
Which response matches what the researchers found? The phrases real early on and overstates how permanently separate the early influence from the claim of lasting control. The wording our results suggest also keeps the conclusion tied to these findings rather than claiming to explain everything about mature communities. Choice D.