DORIS is a meticulous worker.

Analyze the question

This is an emphatic stress question. The word in capital letters (DORIS) carries the stress. The stressed word shows the new or contrasting information that answers the question. The rest of the sentence repeats what was already in the question.

Concept

When a speaker stresses one word, the sentence is correcting or answering a question that got that particular detail wrong or asked about it. So the right question is the one that has the same sentence, except for the stressed word.

Here, the answer is "DORIS is a meticulous worker." The question should therefore have:

• "is a meticulous worker" (unchanged)
• a different name in place of Doris (the part being corrected)

Step by step

• A. Is James a meticulous worker? Only the name differs (James vs Doris). The answer "DORIS is a meticulous worker" stresses the correct person, which means "No, not James, it is DORIS." ✔
• B. Is Doris a careless worker? The differing word is "careless". The stress would fall on MECULOUS or "meticulous", not on Doris. ✘
• C. Is Doris a meticulous student? The differing word is "student". The stress would fall on WORKER. ✘
• D. Was Doris a meticulous worker? The differing word is the tense (was vs is). The stress would fall on IS. ✘

Answer

The correct option is A. The stress on DORIS shows the answer is correcting the name in the question (James) and giving the right person.

Tip

Find the word in capitals, then look for the option whose question differs from the sentence only at that word. The capitalized word is always the "replacement" for what was wrong or unknown in the question.