A question about two texts tests how one author would respond to a specific claim in the other. Read the question to find who answers whom, then sum up each text’s claim and reason. Ask whether the responding author would reject, qualify, or extend the claim: call it wrong or unsupported, limit it, or take it further. Then check the reason, not only the stance. A choice can push back in the right direction but use a reason the author never gives.
Hints
- Hint 1
Start with the bolded words in Text 1. Find the evidence the historians use to support that claim.
- Hint 2
In Text 2, look for what the port-toll registers show. What dates do they cover, and how do those dates compare with the period described in Text 1?
- Hint 3
Llorente also explains where merchants recorded their transactions. Connect that explanation to the historians’ evidence for the bolded claim.
Step-by-step
Compare Llorente’s evidence with the claim
Step 1Find the claim and its basis
Start with abruptly halted intercity trade across Europe and the reason the historians give for it. What supports their claim that trade stopped? Their main evidence is that merchants’ account books from the late 14th century are scarce. Since Llorente is answering, we need to test what those missing books show against her evidence.
- Step 2
Compare the shipment dates
What do Llorente’s records show during that supposed shutdown? The toll registers reveal steady shipments of textiles and grain between cities from 1350 to 1390, while Text 1 says commerce ceased until the early 15th century. Those dates fall within the claimed break, so Llorente rejects the claim that trade stopped.
- Step 3
Explain the missing books
Llorente says merchants began recording transactions in municipal customs ledgers rather than in private account books. How does that affect the historians’ reason for saying trade stopped? It explains why books might be scarce even while merchants were trading: they could record business elsewhere, and documents were often reused or discarded. So missing private books don’t prove that commerce stopped.
- Step 4
Test the stance and the reason
Which response addresses the bolded claim in Text 1 for Llorente’s own reason? The response about only for luxury goods invents a limit, and too localized dismisses evidence she relies on. Blaming demographic decline supplies a reason she doesn’t give for the missing books. The choice linking intercity commerce continued with the weakness of using scarce books as proof gives both her stance and her reason. Choice B.