LSAT 147 | Section 3 | Reading Comprehension: Q9

RC Question 9 Explanation

DISCUSSION: You’ll want to reread the whole fourth paragraph to answer this question. (It shouldn’t take long, rereading is much faster than reading).

This question is basically asking: what was the author’s plan in the fourth paragraph. The tax was part of their overall plan.

The purpose of the tax is to fund acquisitions of artifacts. If you just keep reading line 51, you’ll see the sentence says this. A lot of reading comprehension questions that quote specific lines can be answered if you just go back and read the entire sentence.

The best answer is C. The tax is indeed “one part” of the author’s more pragmatic approach.

___________

1. The author did say the artifacts should be acquired for the museum. But that’s all we know – the author didn’t say anything about the museum’s role in preserving artifacts. 
2. The author is proposing a hypothetical, future policy. Unfortunately, Mali’s past policies didn’t work. Mali’s policies led to the looting of the country’s artifacts, we say this in paragraph 1.
3. CORRECT. See the analysis above. The tax + acquisition idea is one part of a larger plan to document and preserve Mali’s artifacts by allowing some legal excavations.
4. No, a different part of the passage describes the incentive for documentation. Lines 44-47 say that artifacts have greater value when documented, which is a good reason for owners to want documentation. Taxes have nothing to do with documentation.
5. Paragraph 3 is the part of the passage that highlights the flaw in UNESCO doctrine: the regulations discourage documentation. The tax is not a flaw in the doctrine.