"Professor Wilson tells his students that only the most important concepts from the chapter will be on the next test. Student A and student B have different ideas about just which concepts are the most important. This is an example of"

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Professor Wilson tells his students that only the most important concepts from the chapter will be on the next test. Student A and student B have different ideas about just which concepts are the most important. This is an example of .

negotiation

vagueness

motivation

contextualization

This is an example of vagueness.

Explanation:

Vagueness happens in communication when the receiver of the message cannot fully understand what the message means or to what it refers. That means that the way the message was structured or the language used were imprecise or unclear. Vagueness usually happens unintentionally, but it can hinder communication greatly. Since students A and B in the passage have different ideas about which concepts are the most important, they will focus on different parts of the whole. That can mean one of them will do better than the other, in case his/her ideas coincide with the professor's.

the earth’s crust is broken into separate pieces called tectonic plates (fig. 7.14). recall that the crust is the solid, rocky, outer shell of the planet. it is composed of two distinctly different types of material: the less-dense continental crust and the more-dense oceanic crust. both types of crust rest atop solid, upper mantle material. the upper mantle, in turn, floats on a denser layer of lower mantle that is much like thick molten tar.

each tectonic plate is free-floating and can move independently. earthquakes and volcanoes are the direct result of the movement of tectonic plates at fault lines. the term fault is used to describe the boundary between tectonic plates. most of the earthquakes and volcanoes around the pacific ocean basin—a pattern known as the “ring of fire”—are due to the movement of tectonic plates in this region. other observable results of short-term plate movement include the gradual widening of the great rift lakes in eastern africa and the rising of the himalayan mountain range. the motion of plates can be described in four general patterns:

collision: when two continental plates are shoved together

subduction: when one plate plunges beneath another (fig. 7.15)

spreading: when two plates are pushed apart (fig. 7.15)

transform faulting: when two plates slide past each other (fig. 7.15)