Type: Identify the Disagreement
The correct answer is A: "Readers are abandoning newspapers ... appear on the Internet."
Speaker 1 is saying:
- C: Advanced technology is causing a decline in newspaper sales...
- P1: ...because digital news can be reported live as it happens at any time of the day, and print newspaper can’t keep up with that
Speaker 2 is saying:
- C: It is not the fault of technology that newspapers are losing their audience to the internet...
- P1: ...but in fact because newspaper writing is hampered by conventions that do not add to reader’s understanding of the news...
- P2: ...specifically because they are just too long. On the internet, news articles are concise
Prediction of the debate:
Speaker 2 is disagreeing with Speaker 1 about
whether newspapers are losing their audience because their writing conventions (articles being too long) hamper reader’s understanding
or because internet news can be reported at any time and print cannot.
The correct answer is A, and I incorrectly chose D
D is wrong because the speakers aren’t disagreeing about whether or not newspaper writing is hampered by their conventions. For all we know, Speaker 1 agrees with this point. But Speaker 1's point isn’t about the conventions of which papers are written, it is about the timeliness of internet vs. print news.
A is correct because it correctly identifies the debate we predicted. Initially, I thought the disagreement was over whether or not technology was to blame for the decline in newspaper sales, and when I didn't see this answer choice listed, I picked D. However, the debate actually still
is about whether or not technology is to blame, but the correct answer (A) goes one step further into each side’s argument and explains that the debate is about if “readers are abandoning newspapers in favor of news articles … because of the speed with which they appear on the internet.”
