January 2010 Critical Reading

fledgling
Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:35:05 +0000

In the grand scheme of things, delays from toll booth stops are completely negligible, so the only possible reason for it being there imo is money related. Also, didn’t other people suggest that you will actually go faster on the highway?

I am not saying that it is completely wrong to pick faster travel. It is a completely valid thought process that leads to your conclusion. However, as with all multiple choice questions, the correct answer must be the “best” answer choice, even if many choices can still be conceived “correct”.

Do you really really really think that faster travel is a more logical, better supported, better fitting answer of the two?



I’m having trouble remembering where it said that the highway would be faster. Or maybe I just completely missed it when I was reading the passage. Other people have argued that the fact that there was the cards vs. cars analogy shows that they were going slower than the cars on the highway, but I’m still struggling to see how they came to this conclusion. That analogy only shows that the other cars were going fast, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they themselves were going slower.

But perhaps you’re right about the interstate being faster than the back roads… the thing is, although my location says “Metro Detroit”, I only just moved to the U.S. this past summer, and I didn’t realize this due to the relatively short period of time I’ve been in this country. It doesn’t help that my family doesn’t make a lot of road trips either :)

I’m not sure… I had it narrowed down to “inexpensive motels” and “faster travel”, but I couldn’t see anything that said that the motel they finally stayed in was inexpensive, whereas for “faster travel”, there was that thing about the toll booths, and - now my memory’s starting to come back - the analogy comparing the father to a cowboy gave off a “wild” connotation, and I instantly got the impression that they were driving pretty quickly… but that’s probably reading into the passage too much.

My biggest question is still how the father would have considered “inexpensive motels” a reason for choosing the back roads if he wasn’t even considering them at all. Then again, as I said, I can very well be wrong, but I’m just saying that I still have doubts about the “inexpensive motels” answer…