BTGmoderatorRO wrote:Headway is now targeted at a wider readership - to include all NUT members who are on the leadership salary spine. This year's NUT membership credential gave members the opportunity to identify themselves as teachers on the leadership spine and Headway will, in future, be mailed directly to all members so identified.
From the text above, which of the following can we reasonably conclude?
a) Headway is a free newspaper.
b) Formerly, the readership of Headway did not include members on the leadership salary spine.
c) Teachers can only be present on the leadership spine thanks to the NUT.
d) The readership for Headway will increase in future years.
e) Teachers cannot get access to Headway unless it is mailed to them.
OA is b
This is an
Inference question type. Such questions are pretty mathematical - probably the most "Maths-y" question type on the Verbal section of the GMAT. Therefore, if you love Math, you would love solving GMAT inference questions! One of the main ideas in an Inference question is that the GMAT is simply looking for an answer that is (more or less) a paraphrasing of the information given in the passage - i.e., something that MUST BE TRUE, or something that can be stated with a very high degree of certainty, according to the information given in the passage. Therefore, any option that incorporates additional information NOT given in the passage should be eliminated. Also, we don't want to select
a very strong statement as an inference.
A. Headway is a free newspaper - This is not given anywhere in the passage.
Eliminate
B. Formerly, the readership of Headway did not include members on the leadership salary spine -
CORRECT. This can be reliably inferred from the first sentence "Headway is now targeted at a
wider readership - to include all NUT members who are on the leadership salary spine". This means that these NUT members must not have been a part of the Headway readership earlier.
C. Teachers can only be present on the leadership spine thanks to the NUT - This is too strong, and nor is there any causal relationship between NUT and teachers being present on the leadership spine mentioned in the passage.
Eliminate
D. The readership for Headway will increase in future years - We know that membership credential gave members the
opportunity to identify themselves as teachers on the leadership spine; whether anyone will take up the opportunity and actually come forward to identify themselves as teachers is uncertain. For example, it could be the case that no one takes up the offer of NUT's membership credential and the overall readership remains the same over the next few years. Similarly, existing members of Headway may also drop out, resulting in even a possible
decline in Headway's readership. Since there are a few unknowns in this option, we cannot conclude this with absolute certainty
Eliminate
E. Teachers cannot get access to Headway unless it is mailed to them - Too strong and not given.
Eliminate
Hence,
B is the correct answer.
Please let me know in case anything doesn't make sense.
