Helen: Conclusion It was wrong of my brother Mark to tell our mother that the reason he had missed her birthday party the evening before was that he had been in a traffic accident and that by the time he was released from the hospital emergency room the party was long over. ██████ █████████ ████ ██ █████ ███ █████ ██ █████ ████ ███████ ██████ ███ █████ ███ ████ ██ ████ ███████████████ ███ ██████ █████████ ███ █████ ███ ██████
Since this is a Main Conclusion question, we want to break down the stimulus in a way that clearly identifies the support relationships at play. Those support relationships are the most foolproof way to find the argument's conclusion: the conclusion will be supported by one or more premises, and the premise(s) will give us a reason to believe the conclusion.
In the stimulus, Helen discusses her brother Mark's excuse for missing their mother's birthday party. Helen makes three statements:
These types of statements come together to form a rule-application argument pattern. In this structure, the premises are the rule and the factual statement, and the conclusion is the value judgment. That's because by applying a general rule to a specific situation, the speaker is able to support a judgment about that situation based on the rule.
For Helen's argument, that means that statement (1) is the conclusion, while statements (2) and (3) are support.
Analysis by AlexandraNash
The main conclusion drawn in ███████ ████████ ██ ████
Mark did not ████ ███ ██████ ███ █████
the real reason ████ ██████ ███ ████████ ████████ █████ ███ ████ ██ ███ █████████ ███ █████ ██
it is wrong ██ ███████ ██ █████ █████ ███ █████ ███████ ██ ██ █████████ ██ ████████ ████ ███ ███ █████████ ████ █████ ████ █████ ██ ██████ ███████ █████ ███████
it was wrong ██ ████ ██ ████ ███ ██████ ████ ██ ███ ██████ ███ ████████ █████ ██ █ ██████ ██ ██████ ████ ██ █ ███████ ████████
it is always █████ ███ ██ ████ ███ █████