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The Statement

Combined rail-and-bus season tickets are available from some rail stations. This means if you can make your main journey by rail, you can then complete it by bus. Two separate season tickets may be required for some destinations.

The Question

When using a combined rail-and-bus season ticket, the major part of your journey must be by train.

The official answer is True.

I'm very confused, since the original statement only suggests that both travel types can be combined. Nowhere it says the major part must be by train, i.e. this ticket also permits me to travel by train 1 stop (minor part) and the rest of my journey by the bus (major part).

Ivan Balashov
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  • Common sense suggests that you wouldn't buy a ticket at a railway station unless you were intending to make the greater part of the journey by train, but you are right, it doesn't specify that you have to. – Kate Bunting Nov 14 '20 at 11:42
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    This is another one of these questions where the answer differs depending on whether you're supposed to prioritise logical interpretation or pragmatic interpretation. And unless this is spelled out, the question is unfair. So unless this maxim is given to those taking the test elsewhere, this question is inherently unfair. // A logician says ' ... if you can make your main journey by rail, you can then complete it by bus' does not preclude 'if you can make any part of your journey by rail, you can then complete it by bus', 'you can make part of your journey by bus and complete it by rail' ... – Edwin Ashworth Nov 14 '20 at 11:44
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    or indeed 'you may eat sandwiches on the platform'. / The pragmatist (and probably the examiner) would, on the contrary, say that the default sense picked up by the man on the Clapham Omnibus is that the major part of the journey should be by rail. // Lawyers make millions arguing over how these things may be variously interpreted. I dislike such exam questions intensely; they should include 'Most proficient native speakers would probably interpret this as meaning ...'. – Edwin Ashworth Nov 14 '20 at 11:45
  • @Kate Don't Derby do combined bus-and-local (and in Gtr Manchester this can be many miles) season/week- ... tickets? You can buy them at bus or train stations here. – Edwin Ashworth Nov 14 '20 at 11:49
  • @Edwin I don't know. I suppose I'm conditioned by the fact that our railway station is not very central! – Kate Bunting Nov 14 '20 at 11:59
  • @Kate This helps further confirm my view that often questions like the one here are biases against those (whether non-native or native) not having precisely the same geographical / demographic / social awarenesses as the examiner. Who I bet couldn't tell a Derbyshire Gritstone from a Brown Derby. – Edwin Ashworth Nov 14 '20 at 12:36
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    @KateBunting Thanks, but re: Common sense suggests that you wouldn't buy a ticket at a railway station unless you were intending to make the greater part of the journey by train, the train station might be the only place to sell such tickets (we don't know), whether the train portion is major or minor. – Ivan Balashov Nov 14 '20 at 13:41
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    @KateBunting What bothers with these questions is that I'm trying to be as precise as possible, but being punished for this. I wonder if it's better to answer more superficially and start to assume things, which I really hate. The man enters McDonalds. Common sense suggests he's going to buy a burger :-( – Ivan Balashov Nov 14 '20 at 13:48
  • See my conversation with Edwin above. I couldn't imagine using the train for only a short section of a journey which was mostly by bus, but he tells me that in a large urban area like Greater Manchester this could be a possibility. My opinion was biased by conditions local to me (Derby).I agreed with you that "The Statement" does not specify. – Kate Bunting Nov 14 '20 at 15:14
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    @IvanBalashov, yes, that is bothersome, and what makes it particularly bothersome is that the same students who are preparing for this test, may, in the course of their education, have to take other tests on which they will be 'punished' if they do assume anything that is not explicitly stated or logically (as opposed to pragmatically) implied by it. Unfortunately, there is nothing that anybody on this site can do about it, other that express our sympathy with you and many other young people who are in the same situation. – jsw29 Nov 14 '20 at 16:17
  • @EdwinAshworth, in fact, the instructions should probably stipulate not just 'Most proficient native speakers would probably interpret this as meaning', but 'In everyday communication, most proficient native speakers, would probably interpret this as meaning', because these speakers may well take the other approach when the circumstances seem to call for a more careful reading. What makes this question specially frustrating is that it involves a statement of some quasi-legal rules, which may be quite reasonably taken to call for the careful reading that the OP has given it. – jsw29 Nov 14 '20 at 16:30
  • @Kate Whoa. I said that is is quite feasible to buy a joint Gtr M/cr rail/bus 'season' ticket at various locations. //// We have the complication that 'rail' (I'm asserting) covers both regular railway and tram services (and tickets covering 'all A, a bit of B and most of C' are available). A journey of 60% bus, 40% tram would not be impossible. – Edwin Ashworth Nov 14 '20 at 16:40
  • A foolish question. If the main journey is rail the other part is explicitly bus. If the main journey is not rail, the other part is not explicitly defined, so we have to go on the fact that the tickets are combined. That being so, the other part is bus. In summary, this is a rail and bus journey and no information is given about the relative sizes. The official answer is wrong. Too much of the comment hinges on speculation or assumptions that are not justified by the original statements and shed no light on the matter. – Anton Nov 30 '20 at 23:28

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The fact that the questions that exhibit this pattern keep recurring on this site indicates that it is a pervasive problem with the IELTS that those who write it apparently expect the texts to be interpreted in the way in which they would be interpreted in a fast-moving casual conversation, by people of only moderate attentiveness, rather than in the way in which a lawyer would analyse a legal document, or the way in which a conscientious student is expected to read, say, a mathematics textbook.

In this particular case, the authors of the test expect the candidates to interpret the crucial clause 'if you can make your main journey by rail' as if it were 'only if you can make your main journey by rail'. Now, in casual conversations if is indeed sometimes treated as if it were only if, but everybody who has taken an introductory logic course is likely to be familiar with the difference between the logical relationship expressed by if and by only if, when they are used carefully and precisely. The authors of the test apparently expect the candidates to either not be familiar with that difference or to somehow figure out that they are supposed to deliberately ignore it.

The question also assumes that it is obvious that your main journey is interchangeable with the major part of your journey; that may be debatable.

In a comment, Mr. Ashworth has diagnosed the problem in terms of the authors of the test expecting the answers to take into account the pragmatics, without making that expectation explicit in the instructions. Pragmatic considerations are, however, supposed to be sensitive to the context, and in this case 'if you can make your main journey by rail' occurs in the context of some formal rules about the validity of rail-and-bus tickets, and not in the context of a casual conversation. The considerations of pragmatics would tell one that such a quasi-legal context calls for careful scrutiny of the text and attention to such details as whether it uses if or only if. The OP's reasoning is thus correct even if one takes pragmatics into consideration.

jsw29
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