A question about how one author would respond tests whether you can connect two writers’ claims and reasons. Start with the question to identify who answers whom, then put each text’s claim and reason in a few words. If a claim uses a trend as evidence for a cause, separate the trend from what it’s supposed to show. Ask whether the responding author accepts, limits, or rejects that link. A choice needs that author’s own reason, not only agreement or disagreement.
Hints
- Hint 1
Park is answering Ortiz’s claim. Split that claim into two parts: what sea-ice loss should do to seasonal range, and what that range could tell scientists.
- Hint 2
In Text 2, look for how the station results differ by location. What does Park say could account for those differences?
- Hint 3
Connect Park’s final caution to Ortiz’s use of seasonal range as an indicator. Does Park question the temperature trend itself, what it can prove on its own, or both?
Step-by-step
Find the stance and its reason
Step 1Separate Ortiz’s two claims
The question has Park (Text 2) answer Ortiz’s claim. What are its two parts? Ortiz says sea-ice loss should warm winters more than summers, shrinking the seasonal range, and calls that range a useful indicator of sea-ice decline. We need Park’s view of both the predicted trend and its use to track sea ice.
- Step 2
Name Park’s stance
Do Park’s results support the predicted trend? Many coastal stations showed a shrinking range, which fits Ortiz’s idea about warmer winters. Yet a substantial number of inland stations had a stable or expanding range. Park’s stance is to qualify the claim, or accept it only in part.
- Step 3
Find the reason for Park’s caution
What stops the range from tracking sea ice on its own? Park points to changes in snow cover and atmospheric circulation, which can cool winters or boost summer warming. These processes change the same temperature difference Ortiz uses to track sea ice. Since the range can reflect multiple processes at once, its trend can’t identify the sea-ice effect by itself. Park questions using the range alone, not whether sea ice has an effect.
- Step 4
Match the stance and reason
The choice beginning captures an important tendency shows how Park partly agrees and why: location matters, and seasonal range alone can’t reliably track sea-ice loss everywhere. Its warning matches his caution against a stand-alone proxy for sea-ice loss, meaning a measure used by itself to track sea ice. Choice A.