Question

Read the excerpt from "Children of the Drug Wars.”

To ensure this isn’t a sham process, asylum officers and judges must be trained in child-sensitive interviewing techniques to help elicit information from fearful, traumatized youngsters. All children must also be represented by a volunteer or government-funded lawyer. Kids in Need of Defense, a nonprofit that recruits pro bono lawyers to represent immigrant children and whose board I serve on, estimates that 40 percent to 60 percent of these children potentially qualify to stay under current immigration laws—and do, if they have a lawyer by their side. The vast majority do not. The only way to ensure we are not hurtling children back to circumstances that could cost them their lives is by providing them with real due process.

The text repeats the word children. How does this repetition serve the author’s purpose?

A. It emphasizes that it is easy for children to get immigration status.
B. It reminds readers that young, innocent lives are being harmed by failed policies.
C. It helps to convince readers that immigration laws for children should be changed.
D. It helps to convince readers that more lawyers are needed to defend children.

Answer 1

The correct answer to how the repetition of the word "children" serves the author's purpose is B. It reminds readers that young, innocent lives are being harmed by failed policies.

Frequently, the use of repetitions in a text or speech is meant to emphasize an idea. In this text, the word "children" is repeated because the author intends to emphasize the fact that young and innocent lives are involved. The author is reminding the reader that the word "children" is significant and should be very much considered when reading the text, which is a critic to how immigration policies fail in giving them protection and defend them. So, the correct answer to how the repetition of the word "children" serves the author's purpose is B. It reminds readers that young, innocent lives are being harmed by failed policies.

The correct answer couldn't be A. It emphasizes that it is easy for children to get immigration status because the author intends to defend exactly the opposite. The idea being defended in the text is that immigrant children should be better assisted by the government and that policies protecting them are failing. Therefore, the correct answer couldn't be A.

The correct answer couldn't be C. It helps to convince readers that immigration laws for children should be changed because, although the repetition of the word children helps to create awareness, since it shows the reader who is suffering from the policies situation, convincing readers that these laws should be changed isn't related to the word "children". It isn't the repetition of this word that helps convince the readers that immigration laws for children should be changed, but the other data and arguments presented in the text. Thus, the correct answer couldn't be C.

The correct answer couldn't be D. It helps convince readers that more lawyers are needed to defend children because, although the repetition of the word children can create awareness, it isn't what helps convince readers that more lawyers are required, but also the other data and arguments presented in the text, just like the previous paragraph explained. Hence, the correct answer couldn't be D.

Answer 2

The correct answer is option B.

Repetition is a literary device that consists in repeating the same word in order to make an idea more evident and easily remembered.

In the excerpt from "Children of the Drug Wars," the author takes advantage of repetition to remind readers that young, innocent lives are being harmed by failed policies, and suggests changes to current immigration laws.