Question about ね particle

Question

I've been doing some JLPT5 grammar practice , and I came across the following dialogue fragment:

A:『勉強はどうですか』
B:『そうですね。』.

The reason I'm confused is I thought 『ね』 was employed as a way to seek confirmation/agreement but I can't see that at play here. I'm translating 'A's question as 'how is your study?', but even translating it as 'how about study?'(i.e. 'how about we study?'), it still doesn't entirely make sense to me. こんらんしています :/ I am simply a ばか外人 and would be grateful if someone could help me :)

Answer 1

Given the limited context, there's only so much room for interpretation, but assuming that this is only a fragment of the conversation, this can be an acceptable answer.

そうですね is a way to say, that is so or right, but there are also cases where it is used as the speaker is gathering their thoughts about the matter. While not expressly stated in most translation dictionaries, the latter usage can be loosely translated to something like well or even let me see.... Here's a website that indicates both usages.

Wiktionary also includes a translation of:

hmm (used to indicate that the listener has heard and understood)

So if there is not much more context to be had in this particular question, what you are probably seeing is that person B is prefacing their answer with a 'let me gather my thoughts for a second,' or they have no intention to answer the question, just that they want to look like they are thinking about it.