11th grade Lay out an argument’s premises and test each one worksheet

Lay out an argument’s premises and test each one

Grade 11 Reading Worksheet

Circle the best answer.

1. Read this first

   Lower the Limit on Ridge Road (letter to the editor)

   [1] Ridge Road has become the most dangerous stretch of pavement in the town of Calder, and the people who live beside it have been saying so, with growing frustration, for the better part of a decade. [2] Last year the sheriff’s office recorded fourteen crashes along its two miles, nine of them at the Mill Street bend, where the posted speed limit is forty-five miles an hour. [3] Pike Road, which runs parallel to Ridge Road about a mile to the east and carries approximately the same number of vehicles each day, recorded only two crashes during the same twelve months, and its posted limit is thirty. [4] A county survey of drivers on both roads discovered that the typical motorist travels about eight miles an hour faster than the limit on the sign, which means that the number we choose to post is, in practice, the number we get. [5] I am therefore asking the council to reduce the limit on Ridge Road from forty-five to thirty miles an hour before the school year begins.

   [6] Critics will object that a new sign costs money and that motorists disregard signs in any case. [7] The sign itself costs less than two hundred dollars, and the survey I have cited demonstrates that drivers follow the number they see, give or take a few miles an hour. [8] Others complain that the change would add roughly two minutes to the trip from the hospital to the lumberyard. [9] Two minutes is a modest price to pay after a year like the last one, and I would gladly pay it every day of my life. [10] I have lived on Ridge Road for twenty-six years, and I have lost a mailbox, two fences and a considerable share of my patience to the headlights of speeding cars.

   [11] Fourteen crashes against two is not an accident of chance, and no reasonable resident of this town can pretend otherwise. [12] The council should therefore cut the danger in half by changing a single sign.

2. 1.

   Kira looks for the objection that does the most damage to the comparison the letter rests on. Which is it?

   • The writer has lived on Ridge Road for twenty-six years and holds a personal grievance, so the claims in the letter cannot be trusted by the council.
   • Pike Road is straight, flat and well lit, while Ridge Road has a blind bend and no streetlights, so the crash gap may come from the roads.
   • Drivers ignore signs, so a lower limit on Ridge Road would not change how fast they go, whatever number the council paints on it.
   • The letter closes in a confident tone, claiming that the numbers settle the matter, which suggests the writer has not weighed the other side.
3. 2.

   Noah wants the version of the final claim that the letter’s evidence supports. Which version is it?

   • Because nine of the fourteen crashes happened at the Mill Street bend, a lower limit would matter at the bend and nowhere else on the road.
   • Two roads in one year show nothing, so the council should leave the limit as it is until a full traffic study has been done.
   • Ridge Road’s higher limit may help explain its extra crashes, so lowering it could reduce them; the letter does not show by how much.
   • Lowering the limit to thirty will cut Ridge Road’s crashes roughly in half, since its fourteen crashes are far more than Pike Road’s two.
4. 3.

   Milo asks what the move from “fourteen crashes against two” to a lower limit needs. Which unstated assumption must hold?

   • That the two roads differ in crashes mainly because of their speed limits, and not because of other differences between them
   • That the Mill Street bend is the most dangerous spot on Ridge Road, since nine of the fourteen crashes were counted there
   • That a thirty-mile limit would end the crashes on Ridge Road altogether, rather than merely reducing how many of them occur there
   • That Pike Road and Ridge Road carry roughly the same number of cars on an ordinary day, so they can be fairly compared

5. Closing the Lakeside Pool (council speech, printed transcript)

   [1] Thank you, Madam Chair. [2] Many people in this room, myself included, learned to swim at Lakeside, and I do not take lightly the proposal that I am about to place before the council. [3] I recommend that the council close the Lakeside Pool at the end of this season and transfer its $310,000 annual operating budget to the new Fairmont Recreation Center, which will open in March with a modern pool of its own. [4] Consider the figures carefully, because they are the heart of the matter. [5] Attendance at Lakeside has declined from 21,000 visits in 2019 to 12,500 last summer, a drop of forty percent, and the pool now costs the city approximately twenty-five dollars for every visit. [6] Three independent contractors have submitted bids between $1.1 million and $1.3 million to replace the pool’s cracked liner, a repair that the city cannot responsibly postpone through another winter. [7] To spend that money on a facility that fewer residents use each year would be an act of sentiment rather than an act of stewardship.

   [8] The Fairmont pool will have eight lanes, a shallow end designed for swimming lessons, and heated water that will remain comfortable through December. [9] It will charge the same four-dollar admission that Lakeside charges today, and it will be staffed by the lifeguards the city already employs, so that no municipal job is lost. [10] A resident who swims at Lakeside now will be able to swim in a modern facility in March rather than in a failing one in June. [11] Closing the old pool, in other words, saves the taxpayers more than a million dollars in repairs and a further $310,000 every year thereafter, and it takes away no resident’s place to swim. [12] I ask the council to vote for the future of public swimming in this city rather than for the past that we remember so warmly.

6. 4.

   Tala looks for the objection that most weakens the speech’s reason for closing Lakeside. Which is it?

   • The three contractors’ bids could each be too high, so the cost of replacing the liner may be far less than the speech says.
   • The speaker admits she learned to swim at Lakeside, so she cannot judge fairly whether the pool ought to be closed or kept open for another season.
   • Lakeside’s parking lot was closed for construction in two of the last three summers, so the fall in visits may not mean falling interest.
   • Calling support for Lakeside “an act of sentiment” insults the residents who love the pool, which shows the speaker is not being fair.

7. Four Days for County Offices (editorial)

   [1] When the Records Office moved to a four-day workweek last January, many of us in the county courthouse expected confusion, complaints and a steady stream of mistakes. [2] Instead, overtime hours in that office declined by 31 percent over six months, measured against the same period a year earlier, sick days fell from 94 to 61, and the county’s heating and lighting bills for the building dropped by about a tenth. [3] No resident submitted a written complaint to the commissioners, and the office completed its backlog of deed filings two weeks ahead of schedule, a pace that surprised even its own supervisor. [4] A trial that goes this well, with so little disruption and so many measurable benefits, deserves to be copied throughout county government.

   [5] Some commissioners argue that county employees will resent working ten-hour days and will grow exhausted by the end of each week, particularly during the summer. [6] The Records Office staff, surveyed in June, say otherwise: twenty-two of twenty-five rated the new schedule better than the old one, and none asked to return to five days. [7] Others worry about public access on Fridays, but the county’s website already handles most of what residents once did in person, including the filing of forms and the payment of fees. [8] I have stood in the Records Office line on a Friday afternoon myself, and I have never seen it longer than six people, which suggests that the building is hardly overwhelmed.

   [9] The commissioners should therefore move every county department to a four-day week by July first. [10] An arrangement that reduces overtime, sick leave and utility expenses while keeping residents satisfied is no longer an experiment; it is a policy waiting to be adopted. [11] The only question that remains is why the county has waited so long to adopt it.

8. 5.

   Pia looks for the objection that does the most damage to moving every department to a four-day week. Which is it?

   • Heating and lighting bills may have fallen because the winter was mild, and not because the building was closed on Fridays or because of anything the new schedule did.
   • The editorial ends by asking why the county waited so long, a question that blames the commissioners without any evidence of delay on their part.
   • The editorial calls the plan “a policy waiting to be adopted,” a phrase that sounds far too sure of itself to be fair to the critics.
   • The Records Office does filing that can wait a day, while Dispatch and Road Maintenance must be staffed every weekday, so its results may not carry over.
9. 6.

   Luz wants the version of the editorial’s conclusion that its evidence supports. Which version is it?

   • One office’s results say nothing about any other office, so the county should set the trial aside altogether and wait for a much larger one.
   • The four-day week works for county government, so each department can switch by July first with the same results.
   • Because no resident complained in writing, the commissioners know that residents across the county approve of the change.
   • The four-day week worked well in the Records Office and may suit similar offices; how it would work in other departments is untested.
10. 7.

    Bo asks what the move from the Records Office trial to “every county department” needs. Which unstated assumption must hold?

    • That no county service will need any change when its building is closed on Fridays, even a service used daily
    • That overtime in the Records Office fell by about a third over the six months of the trial, as the editorial reports
    • That departments whose work cannot wait, such as dispatch and road repair, can lose a weekday without losing service
    • That the Records Office finished its deed backlog early because the staff liked working the longer ten-hour days

11. Closing the Heron Trail in Spring (speech to the parks board)

    [1] Members of the board, I have counted the great blue herons of Wick Marsh every spring for eleven years, and this spring I counted fewer nesting birds than I have ever recorded there. [2] In 2019 the marsh supported 62 nesting pairs; this year it supports only 41. [3] Over the same five years, the number of people walking the Heron Trail, which passes within forty yards of the main colony, has risen from approximately 8,000 a year to approximately 19,000. [4] Birds that nest close to human activity will abandon their eggs when they are startled, and a nest left unattended for even an hour in May can be lost to predators or to the weather, as anyone who has watched nesting birds understands. [5] I therefore ask the board to close the trail from May first through July fifteenth.

    [6] I do not make this request lightly, and I hope the board will hear it in that spirit. [7] The trail is the pride of the parks department, and its extraordinary popularity is a credit to the board’s foresight. [8] Many of the people who use it are families who discovered the marsh because of the trail, and I sincerely welcome their curiosity. [9] A closure of eleven weeks would leave the trail open for the remaining forty-one weeks of the year, and it would protect the colony during the only months that truly matter. [10] The numbers will recover on their own once the herons are left undisturbed; the colony at Dunmore Pond rebounded within just three seasons after a path there was relocated away from the water.

    [11] The facts, taken together, are not complicated, and I do not believe the board will find them difficult to follow. [12] The walkers came in growing numbers, and the herons departed in shrinking ones. [13] If we want herons to keep nesting in Wick Marsh, we must give them the spring to themselves.

12. 8.

    Ari looks for the objection that most weakens the speech’s explanation for the herons’ decline. Which is it?

    • The speaker thanks the board for the trail’s popularity, which shows a wish to please the board rather than to report the facts.
    • Herons also left two other marshes that have no trails, in the same dry years, which suggests the cause is not the walkers.
    • The count of 8,000 walkers a year is just an estimate, so the rise to 19,000 may be smaller than it seems.
    • The closing summary, “The walkers came in growing numbers, and the herons departed in shrinking ones,” is a blunt line that treats ordinary families as the cause of a problem.
13. 9.

    Esme wants the version of the speaker’s plan that the evidence supports. Which version is it?

    • Walkers caused the herons’ decline, and closing the trail each spring will bring the colony back to its former size within a few seasons.
    • Walkers may be disturbing the colony, and a spring closure is a sensible way to find out; the speech does not show they caused the loss.
    • The closure would do little good, since the trail would stay open for forty-one weeks of the year anyway.
    • Counts of herons rise and fall for many reasons, so the speaker’s years of counting tell the board nothing about why this colony is shrinking.
14. 10.

    Jun asks how the speech gets from “forty yards” to disturbed nests. Which unstated assumption must hold?

    • That the colony at Dunmore Pond is about the same size as the colony at Wick Marsh, so the two can be compared
    • That walkers on the trail, forty yards from the colony, are close enough to startle nesting herons
    • That each walker who passes the colony in May will startle some nest and cause the loss of its eggs
    • That the number of walkers on the Heron Trail rose from about 8,000 a year to about 19,000 over the five years