A question about how one author would respond to another tests whether you can connect their claims and reasons. Start with who responds and the exact claim being judged, especially when part of a text is underlined. Put each author's claim and reason in a few words, then name the response: reject means disagree, qualify means add limits, and extend means take the claim further. Check the reason too, because agreement or disagreement alone doesn't settle the answer.
Hints
- Hint 1
Text 2 is judging the underlined claim, not every detail of Text 1. Read the whole claim, including the words that set how strong it is.
- Hint 2
Look at the turn in Text 2’s first sentence. What does the author accept, and what does the author question?
- Hint 3
Compare the underlined claim with Text 2’s final sentence. Ask how much each author thinks the impact explains.
Step-by-step
Compare the claim and its limits
Step 1Pin down the full claim
Read Leung's underlined claim: a comet strike, and a comet strike alone ended the Clovis culture. What exactly is Text 2 being asked to judge? Leung claims one cause explains the decline, so we need to ask about both the impact and whether anything else contributed.
- Step 2
Find what Text 2 accepts and adds
What does Text 2 accept before it turns to other evidence? The markers do suggest an extraterrestrial event, so an impact remains possible. But severe drought and the loss of animals the Clovis hunted point to environmental stress and resource scarcity. These findings give the author reasons to look beyond the impact when explaining the decline.
- Step 3
Set the limit on the response
The final sentence calls the impact hypothesis one element within a broader, multifaceted account of cultural change. Does that reject every possible role in the decline? No, so the author qualifies the claim: an impact may have a role but isn't the only cause. The response not enough to link that event questions the link to the Clovis decline rather than the claim of a sole cause. The claim that impact evidence is irrelevant removes the impact from an account that still includes it.
- Step 4
Check the reason against Text 2
Now check the reason: does Text 2 make drought and prey loss consequences of the comet strike? Its phrase alternative or concurrent explanations for the Clovis decline leaves room for causes beyond the comet, rather than making them its effects. The objection is that other factors may have contributed, which matches overlooking additional climatic and ecological factors. Choice D.