16Hit1600
Craft and StructureVery hardText Structure and Purpose: function of a paragraph within a two-paragraph text

Craft and Structure practice question

When the Norwegian folklorist Sigrid Halle published her 1937 catalog of Sami joik melodies, she arranged the entries by the administrative district in which each had been recorded. The system proved durable: successive editors preserved it, and for decades scholars treated district as the primary axis of joik variation, mapping stylistic boundaries onto administrative ones. Halle's field diaries, opened to researchers in 2011, complicate this picture. She recorded district, the diaries reveal, because the state agency funding her travel demanded expense reports itemized by district; her own entries repeatedly note that a singer's repertoire tracked family lineage and reindeer-herding routes, which crossed district lines freely. The catalog's organizing principle, in short, was an accounting convenience that later readers mistook for an analytic claim.

Which choice best describes the function of the second paragraph in the text as a whole?

  1. A. It supplies evidence undermining an inference that later scholars drew from the organizational scheme described in the first paragraph.Correct
  2. B. It argues that the melodies preserved in Halle's catalog were inaccurately transcribed and should be recataloged.
  3. C. It explains why Halle rejected administrative district as a meaningful category before her catalog went to press.
  4. D. It identifies a funding constraint that kept Halle from documenting the features of repertoire she considered most important.

Answer: A. It supplies evidence undermining an inference that later scholars drew from the organizational scheme described in the first paragraph.

Correct (A): Paragraph 1 reports that scholars treated Halle's district-based arrangement as evidence that district governed joik style. Paragraph 2 introduces newly available diaries showing the arrangement was a bureaucratic reporting requirement, not a finding — thereby dismantling the inference described in paragraph 1. (B) confuses the catalog's organization with the accuracy of its contents; the text challenges how entries were sorted, never how the melodies were transcribed, and it proposes no recataloging. (C) misdates and overstates Halle's position: she used district in the published catalog and merely noted other patterns privately, so she did not 'reject' the category before publication. (D) inverts the diaries' evidence: the funding rule dictated the reporting unit, but Halle did in fact document lineage and herding routes 'repeatedly' in her notes, so nothing prevented her from recording what she thought mattered.

Why the other answers are wrong

B. It argues that the melodies preserved in Halle's catalog were inaccurately transcribed and should be recataloged.
The second paragraph challenges how the entries were sorted, not how the melodies were transcribed — the text never questions the accuracy of the recordings or calls for recataloging.
C. It explains why Halle rejected administrative district as a meaningful category before her catalog went to press.
Halle kept district as the catalog's organizing principle in print; the diaries only show she privately noted lineage and herding routes, so she never rejected the category before publication.
D. It identifies a funding constraint that kept Halle from documenting the features of repertoire she considered most important.
This flips the diaries' evidence: the funding rule dictated only how expenses were reported, and Halle did repeatedly document lineage and herding routes, so nothing stopped her from recording what she valued.

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