Imagine your friend's cousin writes a rebuttal argument to her claim in favor of teens owning smartphones. read his argument excerpt and answer the question that follows: smartphone ownership among teens is certainly on the rise. yet there is reason for caution. teens are showing signs of smartphone addiction. a survey by text plus found that half of teens "couldn't live without their mobile devices for a week, while 36 percent said they weren't able to go 10 minutes without checking their phones." all this time on the devices creates more chances for problems. smartphones and social media have been linked to serious cases of cyber bullying. some students have been hurt or worse. a school superintendent in california, j. thomas morton, sent a letter to parents. he asked them to monitor their teens' use of all electronic devices, as cyber bullying incidents are on the rise. which of the following is true about this argument excerpt?

a. it is respectful in tone to the audience and supports its claim with specific, credible evidence.

b. it contains specific, credible evidence but uses a disrespectful tone that should be edited.

c. it fails to support its claim with specific, credible evidence and uses a disrespectful tone.

d. it uses a respectful tone but needs specific, credible evidence to support the claim.

Read the passage, then answer the question that follows. no one could have seen it at the time, but the invention of beet sugar was not just a challenge to cane. it was a hint—just a glimpse, like a twist that comes about two thirds of the way through a movie—that the end of the age of sugar was in sight. for beet sugar showed that in order to create that perfect sweetness you did not need slaves, you did not need plantations, in fact you did not even need cane. beet sugar was a foreshadowing of what we have today: the age of science, in which sweetness is a product of chemistry, not whips. in 1854 only 11 percent of world sugar production came from beets. by 1899 the percentage had risen to about 65 percent. and beet sugar was just the first challenge to cane. by 1879 chemists discovered saccharine—a laboratory-created substance that is several hundred times sweeter than natural sugar. today the sweeteners used in the foods you eat may come from corn (high-fructose corn syrup), from fruit (fructose), or directly from the lab (for example, aspartame, invented in 1965, or sucralose—splenda—created in 1976). brazil is the land that imported more africans than any other to work on sugar plantations, and in brazil the soil is still perfect for sugar. cane grows in brazil today, but not always for sugar. instead, cane is often used to create ethanol, much as corn farmers in america now convert their harvest into fuel. –sugar changed the world, marc aronson and marina budhos how does this passage support the claim that sugar was tied to the struggle for freedom? it shows that the invention of beet sugar created competition for cane sugar. it shows that technology had a role in changing how we sweeten our foods. it shows that the beet sugar trade provided jobs for formerly enslaved workers. it shows that sweeteners did not need to be the product of sugar plantations and slavery.