Passage Structure and Organization Practice Test

Passage:

In education policy, some advocates of “learning styles” argue that students learn best when instruction matches an individual’s preferred modality, such as visual or auditory. The idea is intuitively appealing and seems to promise a personalized route to higher achievement. Schools have therefore invested in surveys and training programs meant to help teachers tailor lessons accordingly.

Cognitive psychologists, however, have repeatedly found little evidence for the strong learning-styles hypothesis. While students may have preferences, experiments often fail to show that matching instruction to those preferences improves learning outcomes. Critics also warn that labeling students can narrow expectations, encouraging both students and teachers to treat certain skills as fixed rather than developable.

Instead of discarding personalization entirely, some researchers propose focusing on the structure of the material and the demands of the task. Diagrams may be superior for spatial relationships, while verbal explanation may suit abstract argument; effective instruction, on this view, depends less on who the student is than on what is being learned. The goal is to replace a seductive but unsupported framework with one grounded in how cognition interacts with content.

Question: The author mentions schools’ investments in surveys and training programs primarily to…

Passage:

In linguistics, some theorists claim that creole languages are structurally simpler than older languages because they arose rapidly from contact situations. The claim is often supported by pointing to features such as reduced inflectional morphology in certain creoles. If creoles are simpler, the argument goes, they can offer a window into the basic building blocks of grammar.

Other linguists challenge both the empirical and conceptual basis of this view. Empirically, creoles can exhibit complex syntax and nuanced tense-aspect systems; conceptually, “simplicity” is difficult to define without privileging certain grammatical features over others. What looks like reduction in one domain may be offset by elaboration in another.

A more recent line of research avoids global claims about simplicity and instead examines specific pathways of change in contact settings. By tracking which features tend to be retained, lost, or innovated under particular social conditions, researchers aim to explain creole formation without treating creoles as exceptional or deficient. The emphasis shifts from ranking languages to understanding processes.

Question: Which of the following best describes the role of the final sentence (“The emphasis shifts from ranking languages to understanding processes.”)?