The following appeared in an Avia Airlines departmental memorandum:
“On average, 9 out of every 1000, passengers who traveled on avia airlines last year filled a complaint about our baggage handling procedures. This means that although some 1 percent of our passengers were unhappy with those procedures, the overwhelming majority were quite satisfied with them; thus it would appear that a review of the procedures is not important to our goal of maintaining or increasing the number of Avia’s passengers”

Discuss how well reasoned …etc

The argument that some of passengers are unhappy with baggage handling procedures & airlines authority assumes that it is not important to consider customer satisfaction therefore it omits some important concerns that must be addressed to substantiate the argument. The statement simply highlights the problem & ignores its effects of not taking it seriously. However, at several important junctures the author’s reasoning is insubstantial and therefore fallacious.

First of all, the author doesn’t address that improvement is the basic key to success for obtaining desired goal. It assumes that without improvement & accuracy in their baggage handling procedures they can achieve goal of increasing number of passengers. Second, the author assumes that majority of people are satisfied but there can be possibility that people who are not satisfied they have not complained it.

Moreover, the author assume that with poor baggage handling procedure & less customer satisfaction will not affect their reputation & keep giving them same level of business again & again. But if they review the procedure & try to check mistakes then they will not lose that 1% of passengers.

Furthermore, the argument doesn’t address that the average is drawn & used from specific group or it represent as a whole to make a generalization about the number of complaints. It can be possible that the average data may be collected from business class & not from passengers travelling in economy class if that’s the case then averages are misleading & authority should remember that economy class capture major portion of company’s profitability.

Because the argument leaves out several key issues, it is not sound & persuasive. If it takes into consideration the items discussed above then the argument would have been more thorough & convincing.

For the poet Philips Whitely, who was brought to colonial New England as a slave in 1761, the formal literary code of eighteenth-century English was thrice removed: by the initial barrier of the unfamiliar English language, by the discrepancy between spoken and literary forms of English, and by the African tradition of oral rather than written verbal art. Wheatley transcended these barriers? she learned the English language and English literary forms so quickly and well that she was composing good poetry in English within a few years of her arrival in New England.

Wheatley’s experience exemplifies the meeting of oral and written literary cultures. The aesthetic principles of the African oral tradition were preserved in America by folk artists in work songs, dancing, field hollers, religious music, the use of the drum, and, after the drum was forbidden, in the perpetuation of drum effects in song. African languages and the functions of language in African societies not only contributed to the emergence of a distinctive Black English but also exerted demonstrable effects on the manner in which other Americans spoke English. Given her African heritage and her facility with English and the conventions of English poetry, Wheatley’s work had the potential to apply the ideas of a written literature to an oral literary tradition in the creation of an African American literary language.

But this was a potential that her poetry unfortunately did not exploit. The standards of eighteenth-century English poetry, which itself reflected little of the American language, led Wheatley to develop a notion of poetry as a closed system, derived from imitation of earlier written works. No place existed for the rough-and-ready Americanized English she heard in the streets, for the English spoken by Black people, or for Africanisms. The conventions of eighteenth-century neoclassical poetry ruled out casual talk; her choice and feelings had to be generalized according to rules of poetic diction and characterization; the particulars of her African past, if they were to be dealt with at all, had to be subordinated to the reigning conventions. African poetry did not count as poetry in her new situation, and African aesthetic canons were irrelevant to the new context because no linguistic or social framework existed to reinforce them. Wheatley adopted a foreign language and a foreign literary tradition; they were not extensions of her past experience, but replacements.

Thus limited by the eighteenth-century English literary code, Wheatley’s poetry contributed little to the development of a distinctive African American literary language. Yet by the standards of the literary conventions in which she chose to work, Wheatley’s poetry is undeniably accomplished, and she is justly celebrated as the first Black American poet.

1) Which one of the following best expresses the main idea of the passage?
(A) Folk artists employed more principles of African oral tradition in their works than did Phillis Wheatley in her poetry.
(B) Although Phillis Wheatley had to overcome significant barriers in learning English, she mastered the literary conventions of eighteen-century English as well as African aesthetic canons.
(C) Phillis Wheatley’s poetry did not fulfill the potential inherent in her experience but did represent a significant accomplishment.
(D) The evolution of a distinctive African American literary language can be traced from the creations of African American folk artists to the poetry of Phillis Wheatley.
(E) Phillis Wheatley joined with African American folk artists in preserving the principles of the African oral tradition.

2) The approach to poetry taken by a modern-day Italian immigrant in America would be most analogous to Phillis Wheatley’s approach, as it is described in the passage, if the immigrant
(A) translated Italian literary forms into the American idiom
(B) combined Italian and American literary traditions into a new form of poetic expression
(C) contributed to the development of a distinctive Italian American literary style
(D) defined artistic expression in terms of eighteenth-century Italian poetic conventions
(E) adopted the language and forms of modern American poetry

3) According to the passage, African languages had a notable influence on
(A) the religious music of colonists in New England
(B) the folk art of colonists in New England
(C) formal written English
(D) American speech patterns
(E) eighteen-century aesthetic principles

4) By a ‘closed system’ of poetry (line 34-35), the author most probably means poetry that
(A) cannot be written by those who are not raised knowing its conventions
(B) has little influence on the way language is actually spoken
(C) substitutes its own conventions for the aesthetic principles of the past
(D) does not admit the use of street language and casual talk
(E) is ultimately rejected because its conventions leave little room for further development

5) According to the passage, the standards of eighteenth century English poetry permitted Wheatley to include which one of the following in her poetry?
(A) generalized feelings
(B) Americanized English
(C) themes from folk art
(D) casual talk
(E) Black speech

6) Which one of the following, if true, would most weaken the author’s argument concerning the role that Wheatley played in the evolution of an African American literary language?
(A) Wheatley’s poetry was admired in England for its faithfulness to the conventions of neoclassical poetry.
(B) Wheatley compiled a history in English of her family’s experiences in Africa and America.
(C) The language barriers that Wheatley overcame were eventually transcended by all who were brought from Africa as slaves.
(D) Several modern African American poets acknowledge the importance of Wheatley’s poetry to American literature.
(E) Scholars trace themes and expressions in African American poetry back to the poetry of Wheatley.

7) It can be inferred that the author of the passage would most probably have praised Phillis Wheatley’s poetry more if it had
(A) affected the manner in which slaves and freed Black people spoke English
(B) defined African American artistic expression in terms of earlier works
(C) adopted the standards of eighteenth-century English poetry
(D) combined elements of the English literary tradition with those of the African oral tradition
(E) focused on the barriers that written English literary forms presented to Black artists

8) Which one of the following most accurately characterizes the author’s attitude with respect to Phillis Wheatley’s literary accomplishments?
(A) enthusiastic advocacy
(B) qualified admiration
(C) dispassionate impartiality
(D) detached ambivalence
(E) perfunctory dismissal

In 1933 the rubber, clothing, and shipbuilding industries put into effect a six-hour workday, believing it a seeming permanent accommodation rather than a temporary expedient for what many observers thought was an economy made over productive by advances in technology.

(A) believing it a seeming permanent accommodation rather than a temporary expedient for what many observers thought was
(B) believing it a seeming permanent accommodation instead of a temporary expedient for what many observers thought was
(C) believing that it was not a temporary expedient but a seeming permanent accommodation to what many observers thought of as
(D) not as a temporary expedient but as a seemingly permanent accommodation to what many observers thought was
(E) not as a temporary expedient but believing it a seemingly permanent accommodation for what many observers thought

The price the government pays for standard weapons purchased from military contractors is determined by a pricing method called “historical costing.” Historical costing allows contractors to protect their profits by adding a percentage increase, based on the current rate of inflation, to the previous year’s contractual price.
Which of the following statements, if true, is the best basis for a criticism of historical costing as an economically sound pricing method for military contracts?

A) The government might continue to pay for past inefficient use of funds.
B) The rate of inflation has varied considerably over the past twenty years.
C) The contractual price will be greatly affected by the cost of materials used for the products.
D) Many taxpayers question the amount of money the government spends on military contracts.
E) The pricing method based on historical costing might not encourage the development of innovative weapons.

To read of Adams’ lengthy separation from her family, her difficult travels, and her constant battles with illness is to fell intensely how harsh life was even for the so-called aristocracy of Revolutionary times.

(A) To read of
(B) Reading about
(C) Having read about
(D) Once one reads of
(E) To have read of

Since 1965 there are four times as many Black college students enrolled, and the one million Black people in college today represent 11 percent of all college students.

(A)  Since 1965 there are four times as many Black college students enrolled
(B)  The enrollment of Black college students was only one fourth in l 965
(C) The enrollment of Black college students has increased four times from l 965 on
(D) Quadrupling since l965, there are now four times as many Black college students enrolled
(E) The enrollment of Black college students has quadrupled since 1965

Rules banning cancer-causing substances from food apply to new food additives and not to natural constituents of food because their use as additives is entirely avoidable?

(A) their use as additives is
(B) as additives, their use is
(C) the use of such additives is
(D) the use of such additives are
(E) the use of them as additives is

Although many art patrons can readily differentiate a good debenture from an undesirable one, they are much less expert in distinguishing good paintings and poor ones, authentic art and fakes.

(A) much less expert in distinguishing good paintings and poor ones, authentic art and
(B) far less expert in distinguishing good paintings from per ones, authentic art from
(C) much less expert when it comes to distinguishing good paintings and per ones, authentic art from
(D) far less expert in distinguishing good paintings and poor ones, authentic art and
(E) far less the expert when it comes to distinguishing between good painting, poor ones, authentic art, and