Question 152·Medium·Rhetorical Synthesis
While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:
- On April 14, 2015, unusually heavy rainfall hit Nepal.
- The rain triggered landslides that blocked supply roads to rural villages.
- Relief agencies responded by airlifting food and medicine.
- On April 25, 2015, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck Nepal.
- The quake caused additional landslides, further isolating many of the same villages.
The student wants to highlight how the second event intensified the problems created by the first. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?
For questions that ask you to write a sentence using notes to achieve a specific goal, first restate the goal in simple words (for example, “show how event 2 made event 1’s problem worse”). Then, pull out from the notes exactly what happened in event 1, what problem it caused, what happened in event 2, and how they are connected. As you test each answer choice, quickly eliminate any that (1) leave out a required event, (2) misrepresent what the notes say, or (3) merely list facts without showing the required relationship. Choose the option that is both accurate to the notes and directly fulfills the stated writing goal.
Hints
Focus on the task wording
Underline the phrase in the question: “highlight how the second event intensified the problems created by the first.” Ask yourself: what MUST the correct sentence show about the relationship between the two events?
Find the “problem” and what happened next
Look back at the notes and identify what specific problem the first event caused for the villages, and then what the second event did that related to that same problem.
Check for both accuracy and relationship
For each answer choice, check: (1) Does it correctly match the notes? (2) Does it clearly show the second event making the first event’s situation worse, not just listing events or describing only one of them?
Step-by-step Explanation
Restate the task in your own words
The question asks for a sentence that highlights how the second event intensified the problems created by the first. That means the correct answer must:
- Mention both the first event (heavy rainfall and landslides) and the second event (earthquake and more landslides), and
- Clearly show that the second event made the first event’s problems worse.
Identify the key information in the notes
From the notes:
- First event (April 14, 2015): Heavy rainfall → landslides → blocked supply roads to rural villages (villages cut off/isolated).
- Response: Relief agencies airlifted food and medicine because roads were blocked.
- Second event (April 25, 2015): A magnitude 7.8 earthquake → additional landslides, further isolating many of the same villages.
So the relationship we must show is: the earthquake caused more landslides that worsened the isolation created by the earlier rainfall-triggered landslides.
Test each answer against the goal and the notes
Go through the choices and ask two questions for each:
- Does it show the second event making the first event’s problems worse?
- Does it stay accurate to the notes?
- Choice B: It mentions the earthquake and airlifts but doesn’t explain that the earthquake worsened the earlier road-blocking problem; it mainly lists facts.
- Choice C: It notes that both events caused landslides, but it does not clearly state that the second event intensified the specific problem caused by the first (blocked supply roads and further isolation).
- Choice D: It accurately describes the first event and the response but never mentions the earthquake, so it cannot show how the second event intensified the first.
Only one option clearly includes both events and explicitly shows the second making the first event’s problem worse.
Confirm the best match
The correct choice is:
After April 14, 2015, rainfall-triggered landslides blocked roads to rural villages, and a magnitude 7.8 earthquake on April 25 caused more landslides, worsening the isolation.
This sentence:
- Mentions the first event (rainfall causing landslides that blocked roads),
- Mentions the second event (the April 25 earthquake), and
- Directly shows intensification by stating the earthquake caused more landslides, worsening the isolation.