Multiple choice

Directions: Analyse the statements given and choose an appropriate answer for the question that follows:

Before the invention of cinema, dance and drama were only appreciated by those who could afford to attend expensive performances. Cinema recordings of dance and drama were significantly less expensive than were tickets to performances. Public demand for cinema recordings of dance and drama, when they first became available, was overwhelmingly greater than demand had been for tickets to performances. This response indicates that there was a dramatic increase in the number of people who watched dance and drama, after dance and drama were first recorded for the cinema.

Which of the following, if true, most weakens the argument?

  1. During the first years, after the invention of the cinema, sales of glasses that was not prescription glasses increased dramatically.

  2. At about the same time that cinema recordings became available, mass production techniques were developed to produce photographic equipment more inexpensively.

  3. When cinema recordings of dance and drama first became available, they were purchased primarily by people who had always purchased tickets to performances but could purchase a greater number of cinema recordings for the same financial outlay.

  4. When cinema recordings of dance and drama first became available, individual dances or drama were often circulated widely among friends and family members.
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
C Correct answer
Explanation

The number of recordings purchased is a good indicator of how many people saw dance and drama. This answer shows that there isn’t a necessary connection between the two, by saying that it was the same small group of people who then bought most of the recordings. This answer indicates that each of these people bought several recordings, countering the assumption that more people were actually buying the recordings.

Keep practicing — related questions