An inference question asks you to finish the text’s reasoning using only its clues. Read the words before the blank to see what needs explaining, then put the key clues in a few words. If the text sets two facts against each other, ask how both could be true. Use the other details to predict the smallest conclusion that explains both facts. A choice goes too far if it claims more than those details can show.
Hints
- Hint 1
Compare the governments’ public statements with the private meeting records. Put each side in a few words.
- Hint 2
Look at the elections, polls, and timing of the accord. What might these details help explain about the public statements?
- Hint 3
Use the election details to predict the smallest conclusion that accounts for both what the governments said and what they did in private.
Step-by-step
Explain the gap between public words and private talks
Step 1Find the gap
The governments publicly said they would make no concessions. What happened in private? They had exchanged compromise proposals and agreed on a possible framework, so their public words and private talks didn't match. The blank asks us to explain those public words.
- Step 2
Use the election clues
Why might leaders speak more firmly in public than they bargain in private? Both governments faced elections, and many voters viewed concessions as a sign of weakness, so leaders had a reason to sound firm to voters. Soon after the elections, the governments reached an accord resembling the earlier framework. This links the deal’s timing to the vote and shows that private talks had made progress. Election concerns help explain the tough public talk.
- Step 3
Test the proposed endings
Which endings go past or against the clues? The phrase caused voters to become more accepting invents a later change in voters’ views. The diplomats had agreed on a possible framework for an accord, so made little progress contradicts the records. Nothing links the public statements to asking the other government for a new framework.
- Step 4
Check the claim’s limits
The word partly treats elections as one reason for the statements, without making them the only reason. Even as means at the same time, so this ending allows public refusals and private bargaining to happen together. Choice A.