Solving the Primary Energy Problem

The first task asks for a quantity, the difference between energy produced and energy consumed by Canada in 1990. To calculate the difference, the test-taker will have to ‘cycle’ to locate the consumption and production amounts and then subtract them. The subtraction operation is signalled by the phrase ‘how many more,’ a semantic cue. The labels producers and consumers on the charts are a very close match to the ‘produce’ and ‘consume’ in the question. Each locate in the cycle process involves a search on two terms ‘Canada’ and either ‘produce’ and ‘consume.’

The second question requires a list of all the countries that appear as consumers of primary energy, but not as producers. The item is made more difficult because the number of countries that fit the criteria is not specified, forcing the test-taker to compare each line of the two graphs. The countries that satisfy the question appear in the consumer list but not the producer. The test-taker must cycle to check each country in the ‘consumer’ graph to see if the name appears in the ‘producer’ graph. The task is complicated by the fact that the countries in each chart are ordered according to total energy consumed or produced, and appear in different postitions in each list.

Question three asks for the total energy consumed by three named countries. The testtaker must cycle to pick up the three amounts, matching only the heading ‘consumed’ and the country name (2 terms). The three amounts resulting from this search are then added. The actual operation of addition is signalled by the words ‘calculate’ and ‘total.’ An alternate set of numbers appears in the top (producer) graph and these represent plausible distractors for the requested amounts.