Craft and StructureVery hardTwo authors on the reliability of a source
Craft and Structure practice question
Text 1
The diary of a seventeenth-century steward is our best source for the household, argues historian Ola Bakke: it records purchases, wages, and visitors week by week.
Text 2
The diary is invaluable for what it records. But the steward was answerable for the money, and the diary was the account he would show his employer. Its silences — the weeks with no purchases at all — may be the weeks he would rather not have explained. Bakke reads the diary as a window; it is also a defence.
Which choice best describes how the author of Text 2 responds to Bakke's assessment?
- A. By agreeing that the diary is valuable while cautioning that the steward's accountability may have shaped what it omits.Correct
- B. By dismissing the diary as a forgery.
- C. By arguing that the diary is the only source for the household.
- D. By denying that the diary records purchases.
Answer: A. By agreeing that the diary is valuable while cautioning that the steward's accountability may have shaped what it omits.
'Invaluable … But': the steward had reasons to leave things out.
Why the other answers are wrong
- B. By dismissing the diary as a forgery.
- Its authenticity is not questioned.
- C. By arguing that the diary is the only source for the household.
- Text 2 does not say it is the only source.
- D. By denying that the diary records purchases.
- Text 2 accepts what it records.
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