Question 1.1. (TCOs 2 and 3) What issue is the speaker using to take a position in the following situation? There is little merit to the claim that inheritance taxes will force small businesses to close. After all, the tax has existed for a long time, and there are still plenty of small businesses started every day.
Whether inheritance taxes hit poor people harder than they hit rich people
Whether inheritance taxes place an undue burden on small businesses
Whether to find a better way than inheritance tax to raise revenue for the state
Whether to evaluate tax law based on personal opinion


Question 2.2. (TCOs 2 and 3) What issue is the speaker using to take a position in the following situation? Readers may learn something about their own relationship to the earth by reading the work of conservationists, who spend a lifetime studying the ways that people and civilizations affect the environment.
Whether conservationists can inform readers about local needs
Whether true conservationists have something to teach readers about how to study the earth
Whether readers can learn a few things about the environment from conservationists
That only conservationists understand the environment in a true sense


Question 3.3. (TCOs 1 and 2) In this passage, identify which of the items that follow best states the primary issue discussed in the passage. In pre-civil war Spain, the influence of the Catholic Church must have been much stronger on women than on men. You can determine this by looking at the number of religious communities, such as monasteries, nunneries, and so forth. A total of about 5,000 such communities existed in 1931; 4,000 of them were female, whereas only 1,000 of them were male. Seems to me that proves my point about the Church's influence on the sexes.
Whether the civil war in Spain was a factor in religious activity in Spain
Whether the speaker's statistics really prove his point about the Church's influence
Whether the figures about religious communities really have anything to do with the overall influence on the Catholic Church in Spain
Whether the Catholic Church's influence was greater on women than on men in pre-civil war Spain


Question 4.4. (TCOs 1 and 2) In this passage, identify which of the items that follow best states the primary issue discussed in the passage. In 2007, the Dominican Republic banned the sale of two brands of Chinese toothpaste because they contained a toxic chemical responsible for dozens of poisoning deaths in Panama last year. The company that exported the toothpaste, the Danyang Household Chemical Company, defended its product. "Toothpaste is not something you'd swallow, but spit out, and so it's totally different from something you would eat," one company manager said. The company manager was taking a position on which issue?
Whether the Danyang Household Chemical Company included toxic chemicals in its toothpaste
Whether the Danyang Household Chemical Company did anything wrong by exporting its toothpaste
Whether toothpaste should be eaten
Whether China should have better product safety standards