Writing a Claim-and-Evidence Paragraph
Introduced| English |
|---|
| Commentary/ˈkɒməntri/ |
The quotation is there and the marks are not
- Students reliably include evidence and reliably omit the sentence that explains it.
- The reader can see the quotation; what they cannot see is why you think it proves your point.
- That missing sentence is where most lost marks live.
Dropping in a quotation without explaining it is like calling a witness and forgetting to ask a question.
Start with an arguable claim
- Write a claim narrower than your whole thesis but still arguable.
- It should be specific enough that the evidence you have actually bears on it.
- If your evidence would support half a dozen different claims, the claim is too vague.
A body-paragraph claim should be narrower than the ____ but still arguable.
A claim too broad for its evidence cannot be defended by that evidence.
Embed the evidence
- Introduce the source inside your own sentence, not before it as a separate announcement.
- Quote only the words you will actually discuss.
- A long quotation you do not analyse costs you space and earns you nothing.
On the AP Language rubric, four of the six points are evidence and commentary together. A paragraph with evidence but no commentary is not most of the way to those marks — it is capped well below them, however well written it sounds.
Build a paragraph in proportion
The commonest failure is a paragraph where the evidence is present and the explanation is absent.
Commentary in a body paragraph should explain...
Restating the evidence is not commentary; explaining the relationship is.
Select all the sentence openers that force a relationship rather than a restatement.
"In the quotation" invites a restatement; the other three demand a link.
Evidence and commentary together are worth four of the six rubric points.
That is why a paragraph with evidence but no commentary is capped well below the top marks.
Write the commentary
- Commentary 评述 explains how the evidence supports the claim.
- Begin it with a word that forces a relationship: because, which means, so, the effect of this is.
- Those words cannot be followed by a restatement, which is exactly why they work.
Put the parts of a body paragraph in order.
Claim, evidence, commentary — and the third is where most marks are lost.
Check your own paragraph
- Cover the evidence. Does the claim still make sense on its own? It should.
- Cover the claim. Does the commentary still point at something? It should not — commentary is about the claim.
- If the paragraph reads the same with the commentary deleted, you have not written any.
Weak: "Attendance fell 12%. This shows the policy did not work." Strong: "Attendance fell 12% in the first year, which means the policy lost precisely the participants it was designed to reach — so its own measure of success records a failure." The second sentence does the work the first only gestures at.
A body paragraph is claim, evidence, commentary in that order. The claim must be arguable and narrow, the evidence embedded rather than dropped, and the commentary must explain the relationship — start it with because, which means or so, which cannot be followed by a restatement.