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Beware of Counter Intuitive Choices

In this video, we’re gonna deal with a triple blank text completion and the idea of counter-intuitive answer choices. Now counter-intuitive answer choices, and what I’m gonna talk about in this video, don’t necessarily only come up in triple blanks, but typically do, so keep that in mind. But here, we have a triple blank specimen, and what do I mean by counter intuitive?

Well, if we read the sentence, the government recently ruled against blank annual smog checks for automobiles. Right away, many of us want to say well, obviously the government wants to make sure that their annual smog checks for automobiles because then well people start polluting and we have to save the environment.

However if you read the sentence it says. Since the state already requires that each car must undergo blank maintenance checks and ordering or mandating additional tests would be unnecessarily blank for owners. So you can see that the the sentence is going against our initial impression of oh, the government is gonna require smog checks. Rather, it’s ruling against mandatory or necessary smog checks.

So if you were drawn to the lack of smog, annual smog checks, then you went for what your first hunch answer choice. And so in a sense its counter intuitive because our intuition says oh save the environment but in this case, not that the environment’s not being saved they give a reason for not requiring mandatory smog checks.

So, that gives us the first blank. Don’t fall prey to such words like this perfunctory because its scary looking, mandatory is not a difficult word, perfunctory however is a very difficult word. As long as you read the sentence and of course you don’t fall for the, first hunch answer choice you should be able to get mandatory.

Perfunctory, by the way, means something that you do without much enthusiasm, you just go through the motions. And I guess one could argue when you get a smog test you’re probably being perfunctory about it but again the word does not fit in the blank. Then the second blank. Well, we need a reason why there shouldn’t be mandatory smog checks on automobiles.

A good reason is that cars at least in this state, already have rigorous maintenance checks, that means they are already given smog tests all this other stuff so there’s no need to require additional. Cursory means something that’s done in a superficial manner, not the answer. And illicit which means illegal don’t think oh it relates to legally here, doesn’t work in the blank.

Finally, it says that these smog tests can be somewhat costly and therefore they’re gonna be a unnecessarily burdensome for car owners. So what word means burdensome? Well dismissive clearly doesn’t. Ambiguous, don’t be fooled by this answer choice cuz you think well, there are two possibilities, going, on here and, one would think, getting mandatory smog checks is a good thing but it’s not.

So that’s ambiguous, cause there’s two things that are. That’s not what ambiguous means. Ambiguous means something is, not clear, because it has more than one possible interpretation. And the answer here is, a more difficult word which is onerous, which is similar to, burdensome.

And here we have our three answers. Again, the takeaway from this is don’t just dive into it, text completion because you see a few words and you assume oh it MUST be this. Always read the entire thing.