Chapter 7: Working through Some Practice RLA Questions 97

20. D. change counciling to counseling. This sentence contains a spelling error. Correct the
spelling error by changing counciling to counseling.
21. A. insert and opportunities between challenges and never. The word both refers to two
options, but here you’re given only one option: challenges. If you insert and opportunities
between challenges and never, you include a second option and correct the sentence.
22. C. change who to that. An organization is never a who; only people can be referred to as
who. An organization is a collective noun made up of people, but the collective noun itself
is an impersonal entity and doesn’t qualify as a who.
JCJABE#
Although this sentence may appear long and, therefore, may benefit from rewriting, the

X4sentence isn’t technically incorrect. Although commas do serve to make sentences clearer,
you don’t want to insert them unless punctuation rules make them correct.
23. B. has been working. CanLearn Study Tours is a single entity because it’s one company.
Therefore, it’s a singular noun and needs the singular verb has instead of the plural have.
H\NGf
People like to refer to companies as them when, in fact, a company is always an it. Even
though a company is made up of a lot of people, it’s still a singular entity.
24. B. change the comma after following to a colon. You need to insert a colon before the list
to introduce it.
25. D. no correction required. The options presented either make the sentence difficult to
understand or introduce errors, so the correct answer is no correction required.

RLA Extended Response Practice

In this section, we provide an example of an Extended Response prompt with two passages
that present arguments in favor of and against mandatory vaccination. Your task is to prac-
tice writing an essay, analyzing both positions presented in the passages to determine
which one is best supported. Be sure to use relevant and specific evidence from each article
to support your response.

For this Extended Response practice, read and evaluate the two passages, think about how
to respond, plan your essay, and then draft, edit, and write your final response. Then,
review your essay with the self-evaluation criteria we provide and check out a sample essay
based on this prompt.

A sample Extended Response prompt

Passage One
Vaccines have been proven to be one of the safest forms of medical intervention that
exists. They have virtually eradicated diseases such as smallpox and polio and made
outbreaks of mumps, measles, and rubella rare occurrences. Thanks to vaccines, these
diseases have become rare, and when outbreaks do occur, they spread much more
slowly. If someone catches one of these diseases, the consequences are far less
serious.
Unfortunately, some individuals have decided, for various reasons, to reject immuniza-
tion. By doing so, they put everyone at risk. No one should have the right to put the
health and safety of others at risk. It is time to make vaccination mandatory for all,
unless there are verifiable medical reasons against such a course.
That vaccines work is beyond doubt. It is virtually unheard of today for anyone in a
developed nation to contract smallpox or polio. Smallpox spreads easily, kills about
30 percent of those infected, and leaves the rest with severe scarring. We first learned
98 Part II: Minding Your Ps and Qs: The Reasoning through Language Arts Test

how to vaccinate against smallpox, and, since then, the number of cases each year has
dropped. There has not been a single outbreak in America since 1977. Polio epidemics
were rampant in the early 1900s, paralyzing tens of thousands of people and killing
thousands. One of those left paralyzed by polio was President Franklin D. Roosevelt,
who spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. At the peak of the polio outbreaks in 1952,
some 57,000 people were infected with polio. Of those, more than 3,000 died, and about
20,000 suffered some degree of paralysis. Fortunately a vaccine was developed, and
since the 1990s, there have been no outbreaks in America, Only in a few countries in
the world — Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan among them, where anti-vaccination pres-
sures remain — are there still regular outbreaks of this disease.
Measles can cause hearing loss, severe infections and in a few cases, death. However,
according to the American Pediatric Society, when vaccinated children are exposed to
diseases such as measles or mumps, they contract a much milder case, with far fewer
complications, and recover much faster. More importantly, when a large percentage of
the population is vaccinated, it creates a form of herd immunity. The spread of the dis-
ease is dramatically slowed down, protecting all people, not just those vaccinated.
Sadly, recent outbreaks of measles in America prove that this herd immunity is fading
as larger proportions of the population avoid vaccination.
Today, vaccines can prevent Hepatitis B, which can cause liver disease and lead to liver
cancer. Vaccines can protect against HPV, a virus that can cause cervical cancer in
women. There are 10,000 new cases of cervical cancer in America each year, most of
which could be prevented with this simple immunization. The rotavirus vaccine has
reduced the annual infant hospitalizations from 50,000 to 70,000 annually to less than
10,000. Vaccines work.
Some people fear that vaccines can harm children and even suggest the risk of disor-
ders such as autism. Famous people get behind such campaigns, and even when they
are shown to be wrong, the opposition continues. The study claiming the measles vac-
cine could cause autism has been proven wrong, and the doctors behind it lost their
licenses, yet the campaign continues.
Passage Two
The decision to vaccinate must be an individual choice. We live in a free society, which
constitutionally protects individual rights. That includes the right to make decisions
based on one’s conscience or religious beliefs and the right to be free from unreasonable
government interference. Reasons to refuse vaccination range from moral, ethical, or
religious beliefs, to concerns about the usefulness or even safety of vaccines. According
to a recent study, more than 30 percent of individuals believe they should have the right
to refuse vaccinations for their children as a precondition of admission to school. In a
free society, no one should have the right to force individuals to agree to vaccinations in
the face of such beliefs.
Let’s start by looking at the refusal of vaccination based on religious, ethical, or moral
beliefs. Some religions state that the body is sacred, and any tampering would go
against religious injunctions. Disease is just part of God’s Great Plan, and human inter-
vention would be sacrilegious. Other faiths state that the power of faith and prayer
will give their followers the protection they require, and human medical intervention
is anathema. Other religions that might accept vaccination are concerned about the
use of human cells in the creation of vaccines. Some of those cells come from aborted
fetuses, a use highly offensive to some faiths. Other vaccines are made by using pig
cells. Both Judaism and Islam prohibit the ingestion of pork. They cannot permit such
vaccines. People with strong religious, moral, or ethical beliefs find such vaccines
completely unacceptable.
Others reject vaccinations because of concerns of side effects. They believe that the
degree of protection vaccines provide does not outweigh the risk of serious and severe
side effects. For example, there’s a common belief, backed by some medical studies,
 Chapter 7: Working through Some Practice RLA Questions 99
that vaccines can, in rare instances, trigger auto-immune disorders, including arthritis,
multiple sclerosis, and lupus. Others are concerned about the side effects of commonly
used flu vaccines. A few people have had significant reactions, and it’s well known that
flu vaccines do not protect against all variations of the flu present at any time. They
argue that the risk of the vaccination does not outweigh the risks associated with
catching the flu.
Many people reject measles, rubella, and mumps vaccinations because of the fear that
this may trigger autism in young children. They again believe that the risks associated
with these diseases are far less than the risk of triggering autism. Some parents reject
HPV (human papilloma virus) vaccinations for similar reasons. The HPV vaccine can
prevent an infection that may cause cervical cancer at some time in the future. The
vaccine is known to, on rare occasions, cause Guillain-Barré syndrome, spinal cord
inflammation, and pancreatitis, sometimes resulting in death. They would argue that
the immediate risk of these side effects is far higher than the chance that the infection
could lead to cancer. Other concerning side effects of various vaccines include brain
inflammation that can lead to permanent brain damage and even death.
There’s even a concern that by reducing the overall risk of infection by various child-
hood diseases, we reduce the body’s own immune system’s ability to protect. Vaccines
all suppress the natural immune system. This argument suggests that vaccines weaken
the body instead of strengthening it or making it more able to resist infection.

Evaluating your response

After writing your own response to the essay prompt in the previous section (and before
you read the sample essay in the next section), review and evaluate your answer with these
key points in mind:

✓ Do you clearly state which position was stronger and better argued?
✓ Are the arguments presented in the two source texts credible?
✓ Do you explain which position you selected as the better supported position?
✓ Do you explain why you came to that conclusion? (You don’t have to agree with the
position.)
✓ Does your introduction clearly state your position?
✓ Do you include multiple pieces of evidence from the passages to support your
position?
✓ Is your evidence presented in a logical order to build your case?
✓ Does your conclusion contain an appropriate summary of the evidence and why you
took the stand you did?
✓ Is your essay written in a clear, concise manner?
✓ Does your essay stay on point?
✓ Do you use proper linkages between paragraphs?
✓ Do you use varied and clear sentences and sentence structure?
✓ Is your use of grammar, spelling, and language correct?