The English exam question is which option would best suit as a conclusion for the statement?
The Pacific yew is an evergreen tree that grows in the Pacific Northwest. The Pacific yew has a fleshy, poisonous fruit. Recently, taxol, a substance found in the bark of the Pacific yew, was discovered to be a promising new anticancer drug.
- A. Taxol is poisonous when taken by healthy people.
- B. Taxol has cured people from various diseases.
- C. People should not eat the fruit of the Pacific yew.
- D. The Pacific yew was considered worthless until taxol was discovered.
I would say it would be D. The Pacific yew was considered worthless until taxol was discovered. My reasoning behind that would be that the fruit was considered worthless until the anti cancer drug was discoverd. A and B do not follow. C does follow but I think C would have been best suited had the information "The Pacific yew was considered worthless until taxol was discovered." not been provided.
Best Answer
It depends how one defines "conclusion." If it means what is the "best" thing to take away (ie conclude) from the statement, then yes C is the best; here the conclusion is not part of the text. And D's statement that the tree was considered worthless is unsubstantiated.
However, and here is how the exam question could have been eminently concerned with learning English, because writing is one of the four basic skills... If this question were asking the student to identify which of four sentences serves as the best conclusion (meaning concluding sentence) to the given statement (text), then, were this the case, the learner would have to evaluate many things about the statement, including its style, purpose, intended audience, etc. This all has to do with language learning. The thinking process would be as follows:
This text gives us a kind of history of this tree. A concluding sentence will use the same style. D continues the history of the tree, giving us a new bit of information (it was considered worthless until...) and connecting that back with the most important fact that the text mentions (taxol was discovered). This is a successful conclusion, even if "Pacific (Yew)" is somewhat repetitious. Sentence C does not fit in with the style (description) or purpose (give a history) of the text. It grossly inserts a personal prescription/directive to people, including the reader. It is out of place. It is not even close to being a good concluding sentence for this text as a text.
However, since this is not the purpose of the test and this is not what is meant by conclusion, I am much harder pressed to see what the question has to do with learning English.