A transition question tests how the sentence with the blank connects to the ideas before it. Cover the choices and shrink the surrounding sentences to a few words each. In a longer argument, keep both the claim and its limits in mind. Then name how the ideas connect: does the last sentence add, show a result, turn, or mark time? Test each transition’s plain meaning, because words that sound natural can still claim the wrong relationship.
Hints
- Hint 1
Read the sentence about setting the records aside together with the sentence after the blank. Shrink what each says about the records.
- Hint 2
Look back at what the records leave unknown. Which question is that missing detail important for?
- Hint 3
Connect the final sentence to the opening inference. What do records of performers’ travel tell you about treating separate communities’ accounts as independent evidence?
Step-by-step
Shrink, then test the meaning
Step 1Shrink the historians’ concern
Cover the choices and read why some historians set the records aside: the records rarely identify which stories the performers told. What question does that gap affect? The historians are deciding whether a shared episode is ancient or was spread later, so let’s shrink their concern to limited help with dating the story.
- Step 2
Work out what independence needs
What does the final sentence mean by a prior question? It asks whether the accounts can be treated as independent evidence in the first place. The opening inference depends on communities preserving memories separately, but performers traveled among those communities. Their travel creates a possible route for stories to spread, even though the records don't show which ones did. So the records can matter for independence without settling the story’s age.
- Step 3
Tell a limit from a correction
The words the records bear on a prior question leave the dating problem in place. What kind of turn is that? It shows that a point holds despite a limit. On the contrary means the opposite of the earlier claim is true, but the final sentence doesn't say the records can settle the story’s age.
- Step 4
Test the remaining meanings
In other words means saying the same thing another way, but independence is a different question from dating. Accordingly means as a result, but setting the records aside doesn't make them matter for independence. Nevertheless means despite that, so the records’ limit doesn't erase their value for judging whether the accounts count as independent evidence. Choice B.