Question 146·Hard·Rhetorical Synthesis
While preparing a presentation, a student has compiled the following notes:
- Dr. Maria López is a botanist.
- She surveyed 200 rooftop gardens across Mexico City in 2022.
- Objective: assess whether native plant species improve pollinator diversity in urban ecosystems.
- She found gardens containing at least 70% native flora hosted twice as many bee species as gardens dominated by nonnative ornamentals.
- Rooftop gardens mitigate the urban heat-island effect and provide green space.
The student wants to emphasize the principal finding of López’s survey. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?
For rhetorical synthesis questions like this, start by underlining the specific task in the question (here, “principal finding”). Then quickly label each bullet in the notes as background, method, purpose, result, or side detail. Next, eliminate any answer choices that emphasize the wrong type of information (such as purpose instead of result). Finally, choose the option that most directly and specifically states the key result from the notes, including any important comparisons or numbers, without adding unrelated details.
Hints
Clarify what “principal finding” means
Ask yourself: Which bullet point tells what López discovered from the survey, instead of who she is, what she planned to do, or general facts about rooftop gardens?
Find the most important result in the notes
Look at the bullet that includes a comparison between different kinds of gardens and mentions how many bee species they hosted. That’s the key result of the study.
Match answer choices to note types
Decide which choices talk about results, which talk about purpose, and which talk about side benefits. The correct answer must focus on the result of the survey.
Step-by-step Explanation
Identify the task in the question
The question says the student wants to emphasize the principal finding of López’s survey. That means we are looking for the main result of the research, not the reason for the research, the methods, or extra background.
Locate the principal finding in the notes
Scan the bullet points and separate them into background, methods/purpose, and results:
- "Dr. Maria López is a botanist." → background.
- "She surveyed 200 rooftop gardens across Mexico City in 2022." → method.
- "Objective: assess whether native plant species improve pollinator diversity in urban ecosystems." → purpose.
- "She found gardens containing at least 70% native flora hosted twice as many bee species as gardens dominated by nonnative ornamentals." → this is the main finding/result.
- "Rooftop gardens mitigate the urban heat-island effect and provide green space." → extra benefit, not the main research result.
Check which answer choices match the type of information needed
Now see what each option emphasizes:
- One option focuses on what the survey found about bee species in native vs. nonnative gardens.
- Two options focus on why she did the survey or what she was trying to find out (objective/purpose).
- One option focuses on other benefits of rooftop gardens that are not the main pollinator finding. Only the choice that clearly states the result about bee species will match the principal finding from the notes.
Match the exact finding from the notes to the best answer
The key result in the notes is that gardens with at least 70% native flora hosted twice as many bee species as gardens dominated by nonnative ornamentals. The answer choice that directly conveys this result is:
A) López’s survey revealed that rooftop gardens with a high proportion of native plants supported about twice the number of bee species as gardens filled mainly with nonnative ornamentals.