This page is part of my unofficial solutions manual to the GRE Paper Practice Book (2e), a free resource available on the ETS website. They publish the questions; I explain the answers. If you haven’t worked through the Practice Book, give Section 3 a shot before reading this!

3.13: Geese and Salt Marshes, pt. 2

“According to the passage,” combined with the absence of comparative language like “most,” tells us that there can only be one right answer. We find it, we source it, we move on. As in 3.12, we need to note that the “widely held belief” (a phrase which appears in both the passage and the problem statement) is identical with the “standard view,” so information about one is effectively information about both.

Because the “belief”/”view” is introduced close to the end of this short passage, we don’t need to work through the answer choices in order: instead, it is more efficient to identify the belief and compare it with the answer choices to see if any of them match. The belief contains two basic elements: (1) “geese [and other consumers] do not play a large role […]” because (2) “bottom-up factors” are the real driving force. The first component, as it happens, matches answer choice (C) fairly directly. “Not a large role” is the same as “a minor role.”

Let’s turn for a moment to the wrong (or, in industry jargon, “distractor”) answers. Notice that all of them borrow specific phrases directly from the passage — as, indeed, does correct answer (C). This reinforces a principle referred to glancingly in previous questions: the fact that an answer quotes from the passage, or closely paraphrases it, has no real bearing on the correctness of that answer. It doesn’t make an answer more likely — or less likely — to be the correct choice. It is best, therefore, to focus on the meaning of the answers, and not on how closely or loosely they resemble the specific wording of the text.

To get more specific for a moment: answer choice (A) does indeed clash with what the author says, but not because it’s part of the “standard view” that the author is seeking to criticize. Nobody in the passage, standard or otherwise, is denying the fact that geese graze. Answer choice (B) is a little subtler: we’re told that the geese are consumers, but neither the “standard view” nor the author’s alternative has anything to say about whether they’re the primary consumers. The same goes for answer (D). The author tells us that the geese have a strong influence, but never that their role is primary; the widely-held belief is that even this is an overstatement. Finally, answer (E) blurs the distinction between consumers and “bottom-up” factors, a distinction that both the author and the “standard view” uphold.