In this excerpt, the author is appealing to —

Question

A Northwestern University study showed that in order to fully obtain the cognitive benefits of a music class, kids have to be actively engaged in the music and participate in the class. In fact, a German study concluded that music training improves both cognitive and non-cognitive skills that are more than twice as much as sports, theater, or dance.

In this excerpt, the author is appealing to —

Answer choices for the above question

A. ethos, because the author is showing an expertise related to music

B. logos, because the author cites sources of the studies

C. pathos, because the text makes the reader feel sorry for those without musical training

D. logos, because the text relies on the reader’s common sense

Answer 1

When discussing appeals...

ethos = authority

pathos = emotion

logos = logic

Knowing that, which answer makes the most sense to you?

Answer 2

The question itself has some issues. There’s a grammatical error in the second sentence that makes comprehension unnecessarily confusing. More deeply, there are issues in the overall logic; namely, the second sentence does not really follow from the first. “In fact,” indicates that the second sentence is meant to be a point of evidentiary support for the first sentence, but the evidence provided by the second sentence is unrelated to the claim in the first.

The correct answer is similarly a bit unclear. Normally, a paragraph like this that includes research citations and logical argument based on those citations could be considered as a combination of ethos (the authority of the accredited researchers) and logos (the logical arguments and conclusions). It is that combination that generates an effective research argument.

In this case, there is not a lot of logical argumentation in play and what is in play is flawed, so I guess I’d settle on option A: ethos - based on the author’s claim to authority as derived from the cited research.

But both the question and answer options are problematic.