Practice bank
Reading comprehension: supported inference
VerbalReading comprehensionMedium
Passage: "Antibiotic resistance spreads not only through overprescription to patients but also through the use of antibiotics in livestock, whose resistant bacteria reach humans through food, water, and soil. Because human prescriptions are comparatively easy to monitor and count, policy debates have concentrated on them, even though in several countries agricultural use accounts for the majority of antibiotic consumption by weight." The passage suggests that policy debates have focused on human prescriptions partly because...
- Ahuman prescriptions are the largest source of antibiotic consumption
- Bhuman prescriptions are easier to measure than agricultural use
- Cresistant bacteria from hospitals are more dangerous than those from farms
- Dagricultural lobbying has kept farm use out of public view
- Einternational agreements require tracking of prescriptions
Try it before you scroll. Two minutes on the clock, then commit to an answer.
Correct answer: B
The passage gives the reason explicitly: “Because human prescriptions are comparatively easy to monitor and count, policy debates have concentrated on them.” (B) restates that reason in different words. Correct, and deliberately boring: inference answers that stay closest to the text win.
- (A) contradicts the passage, which says agricultural use is the majority of consumption in several countries.
- (C) introduces a danger comparison the passage never makes.
- (D) invents a lobbying explanation; plausible in the real world, but the passage attributes the focus to measurability, not politics.
- (E) invents a treaty requirement with no textual basis.
The discipline on inference questions: the answer must be supported by the passage, not by your general knowledge. (C), (D), and (E) could all be true in reality, and the test is counting on you importing that outside plausibility. Only (B) is anchored in a stated cause. When two choices feel possible, ask which one the passage’s author would recognize as their own claim.