Read across disciplines: passage pair 7

Read across disciplines: passage pair 7: original cases with explanations after your first response.

Paper packet. Every task here also exists on screen, where it is checked automatically; answers written on paper are not assessed by Nydus. When you are back at a device, enter your answers there.

1. What you will learn

Choose a method from the question's conditions before opening feedback. Work without notes first, then explain which restriction or evidence determined your answer. These are original instructional questions, not an adaptive test or a predictor of an official score.

2. Practice

Read the shared passage and answer every question. Each question is graded separately; select-all questions require the exact set.

An ecologist studying island birds found that nests near tourist paths suffered fewer predation events. One possibility was that predators avoided people. Another was that birds choosing pathside nests were more experienced and therefore better at defending them. The ecologist compared the same nesting pairs before and after a path was temporarily closed. Predation increased during closure, which supports a role for human presence. Because weather also changed during that interval, however, the result does not by itself eliminate every alternative explanation.

Which statement best expresses the passage's main point?

A within-pair comparison supports one mechanism while retaining a possible time-varying confound.
Tourist paths always harm nesting birds.
The study proves that experience cannot affect nest defense.
Path closure left every environmental condition unchanged.
The ecologist measured only the number of tourists.

Which conclusion is best supported by the passage?

Using the same pairs reduces concern about stable differences in their nesting experience.
Weather was experimentally held constant.
No predators approached nests during closure.
The study conclusively identified weather as the cause.
Experienced birds never nest near paths.

Select all statements supported by the passage.

The same pairs were compared across the closure.
Predation increased during closure.
Weather changed during the observation interval.

3. Practice

Read the shared passage and answer every question. Each question is graded separately; select-all questions require the exact set.

A novelist alternates chapters between two narrators who describe the same household. Their accounts disagree about motives but often agree about actions. Some critics regard the discrepancies as a puzzle with one concealed solution. Another reading treats them as the novel's central subject: people can share an event without sharing an explanation of it. On this reading, searching only for the narrator who is correct risks flattening the work's exploration of perspective. It does not follow that every factual claim in the novel is equally credible.

Which statement best expresses the passage's main point?

Conflicting interpretations may be a deliberate subject of the novel rather than merely a puzzle to resolve.
The narrators disagree about every action in the household.
All factual statements in the novel are equally credible.
The novel has only one narrator.
Critics unanimously reject the idea of a concealed solution.

Which conclusion is best supported by the passage?

Agreement about actions can coexist with disagreement about motives.
Perspective makes factual evaluation impossible.
One narrator explicitly confesses to inventing all events.
The author prohibits readers from comparing accounts.
The household appears in only one chapter.

Select all statements supported by the passage.

The narrators often agree about actions.
Some critics seek one concealed solution.
The passage endorses equal credibility for every factual claim.

4. What you can do now

Classify each error as interpretation, method, execution or response format. Revisit the relevant worked lesson, then retry after a study gap. A remembered item is review, not fresh assessment evidence.