A transition question tests how the sentence with the blank connects to the sentence before it. Cover the choices and shrink both sentences, keeping what each says rather than only its topic. When the blank follows a claim, ask how does the next sentence connect? The link may add support, show a result, turn against a point, or place events in time. Test each transition by its plain meaning, because sounding smooth doesn't make the relationship true.
Hints
- Hint 1
Read the sentence beginning “That inventory” together with the sentence after the blank. Shrink each to its main point, focusing on what the inventory can or can't show.
- Hint 2
Look for what the inventory leaves out in the final sentence. How does that missing detail connect to what the inventory can prove about a remark's role?
Step-by-step
Shrink and test the relationship
Step 1Find the claim before the blank
The inventory shows that the same words accompany the same action, but that can't prove the same structural role in both versions. What claim does the blank follow? Matching words and actions don't prove that an exchange does the same job in the story, so we need to see how the final sentence connects to that limit.
- Step 2
Explain what the inventory misses
Why does audience knowledge matter to that limit? The last sentence says audience knowledge is absent from the inventory, though it determines whether a remark creates a suspicion or confirms one. Moving the reveal from the final chapter to the opening scene means viewers may understand an unchanged remark differently from readers. That gap explains why matching words and actions aren't enough: the final sentence's job is to back up the limit with a reason.
- Step 3
Test meanings that go another way
Let's test the choices against a claim followed by its reason. As a result means because of that, which would make the inventory's limit cause the missing audience knowledge. Nevertheless means despite that, which would make the missing knowledge push against the limit; instead, it explains the limit.
- Step 4
Tell the supporting meanings apart
Which meaning fits the way this sentence supports the earlier claim? By the same token means the same reason supports another claim, but this sentence supplies the reason for the claim before it. After all means here's a reason that supports what was said, so it fits the explanation of why the inventory falls short. Choice A.