Reading Comprehension · Law
PrepTest 111 · Section 2 · Passage 4
Questions 21–26
Before you start
Open PrepTest 111, Section 2 in your official copy from LSAC and read the passage for Questions 21–26, using the structure guide below. The passage is not reprinted here.
Structure guide
- P1: presents a thinker's warning that a group may adopt a flawed view only because the one alternative looks worse, then describes that alternative and why the thinker rejects it
- P2: lays out the main claims of the more popular view, using an analogy
- P3: gives the thinker's objection (the popular view clashes with real practice), then explains the thinker's own in-between theory and its limits
- P4: the author, siding with the thinker, names the popular view's core mistake and the payoff of the thinker's theory
Step 2 · The kid passage
Grandpa's Recipe Cards
Priya warns that Aunt Rosa's cooks may grab a poor way of reading Grandpa's recipe cards, the Agreement Rule, only because they think the one other choice is Free Cooking, which everyone finds plainly bad. Free Cooking says a cook should follow her own taste, even if that means ignoring the card and how the family has always read it. Priya calls this showing off: it steals the card writer's job.
The Agreement Rule, the more popular choice, says taste has nothing to do with a card's meaning. A card means what the family agrees it means, the way a nickname means whatever everyone uses it for. Cooks may argue only about what the family habit is, and a vote settles it, not taste. With no agreement, the card has no right reading at all.
Priya says this does not match how cooks really act: they argue as if one reading is right even when nobody agrees. Her view aims to give that habit a solid reason without sliding into Free Cooking. Every card set has an inner balance, and a reading that fits it can be right with no vote. Since balance involves taste, a cook may sometimes trust her tongue, but never ignore the cards' logic.
The Agreement fans' mistake, as Priya rightly shows, is thinking a card can mean only what folks believe it says, Grandpa or today's cooks. Once we see the cards' inner balance, we can improve on today's readings and even on Grandpa's own.
Step 4 · The courtroom tale
The Garden Club Bylaws
Judge Amari held up the garden club's bylaws. Rule 7 says plots go to active members. Ms. Lane argued first: 'It means whatever most members say it means. They cannot agree, so there is no answer at all.' Mr. Ford jumped up: 'Forget the words. Your Honor should just do what feels fair.' Mr. Whitfield tugged his suspenders. 'Neither, Your Honor. These bylaws have a purpose running through them: they reward people who tend the garden. Read Rule 7 to fit that purpose. Your sense of fairness can help, but the purpose fences it in.' The judge smiled. 'So, not a vote and not a whim. A reading that fits the whole rulebook.'