In many bilingual communities of Puerto Rican Americans living in the mainland United States, people use both English and Spanish in a single conversation, alternating between them smoothly and frequently even within the same sentence. ████ █████████████████ ███████████████████ ██████ ██ █████████ ████████████ ███
Phenomenon ·Code-switching
Puerto Rican Americans use both English and Spanish in a single conversation, smoothly alternating between them.
Experimental Setup ·To test effects of domains on code-switching
Researchers create hypothetical situations with 2 congruent factors or 2 incongruent factors. Then, researchers ask students to determine the third factor and which mixture of language they would use.
Prompted with participants: parent and child and topic: how to be a good son or daughter. Students chose setting as home and language was Spanish only.
Family thought they spoke only English but they code-switched to Spanish (even when situational factors didn't change) to express certain attitudes like intimacy or humor more emphatically.
Passage Style
Phenomenon-hypothesis
Single position
6.
Which one of the following ████ ██████████ █████████ ███ ████ █████ ██ ███ ████████
Question Type
Main point
The main point is best expressed at the end of P1: “in the vast majority of cases subtle factors, either situational or rhetorical, explain the use of code-switching.” The rest of the passage explores the situational or rhetorical factors that explain most cases of code-switching among Puerto Rican Americans.
a
The lives of ██████ █████ █████████ ███ ████████ ██ ███████ ████ ██ ███████████████
This doesn’t capture the point that most cases of code-switching among Puerto Rican Americans are explained by situational or rhetorical factors. The passage focuses on describing these factors, so the main point should encompass them.
b
It is not ██████ ████████ ██ ███████ ███ ██████████████ ██████ ██ █████████████ █████ ██████ █████ ██████████
This doesn’t capture the point that most cases of code-switching among Puerto Rican Americans are explained by situational or rhetorical factors. Although it’s true that code-switching isn’t always possible to explain, the author focuses on the cases that are possible to explain.
The author doesn’t suggest that the number of code-switching cases that rhetorical factors can explain is higher than the number explainable by situational factors. If anything, the author suggests situational factors might explain more instances.
This doesn’t capture the point that most cases of code-switching among Puerto Rican Americans are explained by situational or rhetorical factors. Also, the author never suggests that linguists have changed their beliefs about code-switching.
e
Most code-switching among ██████ █████ █████████ ███ ██ █████████ ██ ██████ ███████████ ███ ██████████ ████████
This best captures the main point. The main point is expressed at the end of P1: “in the vast majority of cases subtle factors, either situational or rhetorical, explain the use of code-switching.” The rest of the passage explores the situational or rhetorical factors that explain most cases of code-switching among Puerto Rican Americans.
Difficulty
89% of people who answer get this correct
This is a slightly challenging question.
It is significantly easier than other questions in this passage.
CURVE
Score of students with a 50% chance of getting this right
25%129
140
75%151
Analysis
Main point
Phenomenon-hypothesis
Science
Single position
Answer Popularity
PopularityAvg. score
a
1%
157
b
7%
157
c
1%
150
d
2%
155
e
89%
164
Question history
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