An inference question asking for a cause tests whether you can explain a result from the text’s clues. Read the words before the blank to see what needs explaining. Then ask what was unusual about the result and what was different where it happened. Put those clues in a few words and predict the smallest conclusion they support. Stay within the evidence, because a story that could happen still needs support from the text.
Hints
- Hint 1
The final sentence asks for the cause of an unusually large number of broken pots. Separate what needs explaining from the clues that might explain it.
- Hint 2
Look for what set this stall apart from the other cookware stalls. How might the researchers’ idea about how the pots were made connect that difference to the broken pottery?
Step-by-step
Explain the unusual breakage
Step 1Find what needs a cause
The stall had an unusually large number of broken cooking pots, and the final sentence asks what that breakage resulted from. Are we explaining the owner’s goal or the broken pots? We need a cause of the breakage, not a reason for making the pots glitter.
- Step 2
Connect the beads to the pots
What connects the beads to the unusual breakage? They were not present at other cookware stalls, and researchers think the owner may have mixed the beads into the clay. That means the beads may tell us how these pots were made, not only what was lying in the stall. We can predict that the change in the pots themselves may explain why so many broke.
- Step 3
Find the missing cause
The phrase making the pots more fragile than typical cookware gives the missing cause for the high number of broken pots in the stall. Fragile means likely to break, so pots weakened by the added beads would break more often than cookware made without them. Choice D.