A central idea question tests whether you can state what the whole text says about its topic. Name the topic, then look for where the writer questions an earlier view. Follow that turn to the reasons and any change in how a researcher works, because both may belong in the main point. Predict one sentence that covers the problem and the response. A true detail isn't the whole point, and a broader claim still needs support from the text.
Hints
- Hint 1
Look at the shift introduced by Reyes. What earlier inference is she questioning?
- Hint 2
Trace which copies are likely to survive. How does the passage connect heavy use with the chance that a pamphlet reaches an archive?
- Hint 3
Connect Reyes's final two methods to her concern. Why does she use one approach for similar editions and another for unlike editions?
Step-by-step
Follow the challenge to the research method
Step 1Find the topic and turn
Few annotations in surviving pamphlets are taken to mean little engagement, so the topic is how historians judge past reading. Does Reyes accept that judgment? The text says Imani Reyes questions that inference, which directs us to her reasons after the turn.
- Step 2
Explain why surviving copies can mislead
Why might surviving copies give the wrong picture? Pamphlets were often discarded after heavy use, so copies with the strongest signs of reading were less likely to survive. Costly books were more likely to be preserved regardless of how intensively they had been read, so their survival didn't depend on use in the same way. Few surviving notes may not mean little past engagement, because heavily used copies may be missing. That can give us a false picture when we compare cheap pamphlets with costly books.
- Step 3
Connect the problem to Reyes's response
How does Reyes handle that problem? She compares annotations directly only among editions with similar prices and circulation patterns, and for unlike editions she combines annotations with lending, production, and ownership records. Our prediction is that annotation counts can mislead when heavily used copies are missing, so Reyes uses other records when comparing unlike editions.
- Step 4
Test the strength of the claim
How strong is the warning in the choice beginning Differences in circulation and preservation? Its word can says annotation counts may mislead, not that they're always useless. Reading them in light of other records keeps annotations as part of the evidence, which fits Reyes's continued use of them. Choice C.