Question 61·Easy·Rhetorical Synthesis
While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:
• Many fruits, vegetables, and nuts rely on pollination by bees.
• Bees are responsible for pollinating roughly one out of every three bites of food people eat.
• Urban gardens and roadside plantings with native flowers can provide forage and habitat for bees.
• Bee populations have declined in recent decades due to habitat loss, disease, and some pesticides.
• Several cities have adopted pollinator-friendly landscaping guidelines.
The student wants to emphasize how essential bees are to the human food supply. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?
For questions that ask you to choose a sentence using notes to achieve a specific writing goal, first underline key words in the goal (for example, “essential” and “human food supply”). Then scan the notes and immediately eliminate any that don’t directly address those key ideas. Among the remaining options, pick the one that most directly and strongly matches the goal—often the one that quantifies or clearly states the relationship—while ignoring choices that are merely related to the general topic (like causes, effects, or policies) but don’t answer the exact purpose of the sentence.
Hints
Focus on the goal words
In the question, underline or mentally highlight “how essential” and “human food supply.” Your answer must directly address both ideas.
Look for notes about people’s food, not just bees
From the notes, which statements talk specifically about the food that people eat, instead of talking about bee habitats, population declines, or city actions?
Prefer the clearest, strongest connection
Among the options that mention food, which one gives the clearest and strongest evidence that humans depend heavily on bees?
Step-by-step Explanation
Understand the writing goal
The question says the student wants to emphasize how essential bees are to the human food supply. That means the sentence should show how much people’s food depends on bees, not just describe bees’ problems or how people help them.
Find the most relevant note
Look back at the bullet points and ask: which notes talk directly about people’s food and how much of it relies on bees? Two notes mention food: one says many fruits, vegetables, and nuts rely on bees, and another gives a specific fraction of the food people eat that bees help pollinate. The second is more direct and powerful because it quantifies the dependency.
Match notes to the answer choices
Each answer choice is just one of the notes. Some choices focus on where bees can live, some on why bees are declining, and some on what cities are doing. Only one choice clearly explains the degree to which human food depends on bees, which is exactly what “how essential bees are to the human food supply” is asking for.
Select the sentence that best shows bees’ importance to our food
The best way to emphasize bees’ essential role in the human food supply is the choice that says “Bees are responsible for pollinating roughly one out of every three bites of food people eat.” This is answer A.