A question about two texts tests how one author would respond to the other’s claim. Start with the question to find who answers whom, and focus on the underlined claim. Put that claim and the responding author’s reasons in a few words, then name the author’s view: reject it, accept it with limits, or take it further. Check how far those reasons reach, because a choice can give the right view but change the reason or make it too strong.
Hints
- Hint 1
The question asks Text 2’s author to judge the underlined claim. Separate what Text 1 describes from what it takes those features to mean.
- Hint 2
In Text 2, look at the turn after the opening sentence. How does it change the author’s point?
- Hint 3
Read Text 2’s final sentence closely. Work out how much weight it gives each reason for Reyes’s choices.
Step-by-step
Claim, stance, and reason
Step 1Separate resemblance from influence
Text 1’s claim, these features suggest direct Japanese influence on Reyes’s mature style, is what Text 2’s author must judge. What supports it? The eaves, window bands, gardens, and proportions resemble East Asian designs, so Text 1 treats shared features as signs of influence, not only as similar shapes.
- Step 2
Find Text 2’s reasons
How does Text 2 explain that resemblance? The author agrees the buildings do recall certain East Asian precedents, but also points to steel that lets roofs extend farther, building codes in arid cities that reward shade, and modernism’s taste for unbroken indoor surfaces. Several causes could lead to the same forms, so resemblance alone doesn’t show how Reyes arrived at them.
- Step 3
Set the strength of the response
How far does Text 2 take that challenge? as much as, if not more than, imitation of Japanese models leaves borrowing possible while giving the other causes a large role. The author accepts the claim only with limits. The choice saying convergence alone rules out more than Text 2 does, while advances in postwar steel construction largely explain gives steel a leading role the text never assigns it.
- Step 4
Match the author’s full reason
The choice East Asian precedents generally makes the disagreement about which region supplied the models, but Text 2 isn’t arguing for a different region. Overlooking other pressures shows the full range of other causes: its technology, climate, and modernism match Text 2’s technical, regional, and stylistic pressures, each of which could help produce the shared features. Choice D.