Question 145·Medium·Rhetorical Synthesis
While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:
- In many cities, residents lack outdoor space but still want to grow their own herbs and vegetables.
- Urban community gardens help, yet they cannot serve every interested resident.
- In 2022, horticulturist Lena Morales launched PocketPlot, a set of modular planter boxes.
- Each lightweight planter is made from recycled plastic and is designed to interlock, allowing users to build vertical gardens on balconies.
- The planters include channels that distribute water evenly across stacked units.
The student is drafting an essay about solutions to limited gardening space in cities and wants to introduce Morales’s invention as a response to this problem. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?
For rhetorical synthesis questions, always read the question stem first and underline the exact writing goal (for example, “introduce X as a solution to Y”). Then scan the notes to identify (1) the problem, (2) the proposed solution, and (3) the most relevant features that connect them. When you evaluate the answer choices, quickly eliminate any that (a) ignore either the problem or the solution, (b) focus on minor or decorative details instead of the main idea, or (c) add information that doesn’t appear in the notes. The correct choice will directly fulfill the stated goal using important, supported details that clearly link the problem to the solution.
Hints
Focus on the goal in the question stem
Underline the key task: the sentence must introduce Morales’s invention specifically as a response to limited gardening space in cities.
Find the problem and solution in the notes
Look back at the notes and locate what describes the problem city residents face and what describes Morales’s product and how it works.
Match choices to both problem and solution
Ask for each answer: does it clearly connect city residents with little space who want to grow food to PocketPlot and how it helps them? If it only talks about gardens in general or only about design details, it’s probably not best.
Watch for irrelevant or extra details
Be careful with choices that add information not supported by the notes or that focus on side details instead of the main problem-solution relationship.
Step-by-step Explanation
Identify the writer’s goal
The question says the student is writing about solutions to limited gardening space in cities and wants to introduce Morales’s invention as a response to this problem.
So the correct sentence must do both:
- Refer to the problem: not enough gardening space for city residents who want to grow food.
- Present Morales’s invention as a solution to that problem.
Pull the most relevant notes
From the notes, mark what’s directly tied to the goal:
- Problem: “In many cities, residents lack outdoor space but still want to grow their own herbs and vegetables.”
- Partial solution: “Urban community gardens help, yet they cannot serve every interested resident.”
- Invention and key features:
- “In 2022, horticulturist Lena Morales launched PocketPlot, a set of modular planter boxes.”
- “Each lightweight planter is made from recycled plastic and is designed to interlock, allowing users to build vertical gardens on balconies.”
These details connect city dwellers with limited space to a vertical, balcony-based gardening system.
Check each option against the goal
Now test each answer choice against the two requirements:
- Does it mention the problem (limited gardening space / space-strapped city dwellers who want to grow food)?
- Does it present PocketPlot as a solution and highlight relevant features (vertical, balcony, modular planters)?
Eliminate any choice that:
- Only gives design details without tying to the problem.
- Talks about community gardens instead of Morales’s invention.
- Adds irrelevant or unsupported information from outside the notes.
Select the sentence that links problem and solution
The option that clearly states the problem of limited gardening space for city residents and presents Morales’s PocketPlot system—with its key balcony-friendly, vertical, interlocking design—as a solution, while staying grounded in the notes, is:
To help city residents with little outdoor space grow herbs and vegetables, Lena Morales launched PocketPlot in 2022, interlocking planters that stack into vertical balcony gardens.