Critical reading question

<p>Passage:</p>

<p>It is easy enough to understand why we would want such qualities as dignity and clarity to play a role in our lives, less clear is why we should also need the objects around us to speak to us of them. Why should it matter what our environment has to say to us? Why should architects bother to design buildings which communicate specific sentiments and ideas, and why should we be so negatively affected by places which reverberate with what we take to be the wrong allusions? Why are we vulnerable, so inconveniently vulnerable, to what the spaces we inhabit are saying?</p>

<p>Question: The author's use of the phrase "what we take to be" serve to:
A) question the motives of architects who design public buildings.
B) acknowledge that the associations buildings evoke are open to interpretation.
C) suggest that people are prone to make inaccurate judgments in unfamiliar situations
D) imply that the effect our environment has on us should be self - determined.
E) raise the possibility that different buidling designs can convey similar moods.</p>

<p>I suppose "what we take to be" means "what we consider". In other words, the effect environment has on us is subjective. So I choose D, but the answer is B. I think B and D are quite similar, are they not? Subjective = self-determined = open to interpretation.</p>

<p>Also can you give me some advice to deal with this kind of question? I perfectly understand every word in the passage, but there is a problem with my perception ...</p>

<p>Thanks a lot.</p>

<p>(D) gives a recommendation via should whereas the phrase what we take to be does not serve as a recommendation. On that basis I would cross off (D). what we take to be doesn’t imply any more than what you said it does, “what we consider to be” or “what we interpret as,” although, that phrase could be used in building up a PREMISE for suggesting that “the effect our environment has on us should be self - determined.” Tell me if this makes sense.</p>