Lincoln believed that the Founders would have supported the North because they would have supported his attempt to move the slaves to a more equal position. For a quotation, a good principle is to use a few of its key words just before or after it. Spell out for them how it is that the data counts as evidence for your claim. Whenever you support a claim with numbers, charts, pictures, and especially quotations - whatever looks like primary data - do not assume that what you see is what your readers will get. Your paper will seem to be a pastiche of strung-together quotations, suggesting that your data never passed through the critical analysis of a working mind. Quotations rarely speak for themselves most have to be “unpacked.” If you offer only quotes without interpreting those quotes, your reader will likely have trouble understanding how the quote, as evidence, supports your claim. After it has been explained, it may or may not be persuasive (after all, the author of “all men are created equal” was himself a slave owner). How does that support a claim about what the founders would think about 1863? When pressed, the writer explained: “Since the Founders dedicated the country to the proposition that all men are created equal and Lincoln freed the slaves because he thought they were created equal, then he must have thought that he and the Founders agreed, so they would have supported the North. The writer may be correct that Lincoln believed that the Founders would have supported the North, but what in that quotation would cause a reader to agree? In other words, how does the quotation count as evidence of the claim? The evidence says something about the views of the founders in 1776. Lincoln believed that the Founders would have supported the North, because as he said, this country was “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” No flaw more afflicts the papers of less experienced writers than to make some sort of claim, or to offer a quotation from the text, and assume that the reader understands how the quotations speaks to the claim. When you provide evidence, you turn your opinions into arguments.īut before readers can value your claim as supported with evidence, they must first understand how your evidence counts as evidence for that claim. In fact, your readers generally will not highly value your opinions unless you provide some evidence to support them. Without such evidence, your claims are merely statements of opinion.You are entitled to your opinions but you’re not entitled to having your readers agree with them. The most common evidence you will offer to support your claims will be quotations from the texts you read and references to passages in them. Robin Jeffrey Ensuring your evidence fits your claims Quoting, Paraphrasing and Summarizing to Avoid PlagiarismĮnglish 102: Reading, Research, and Writing Questions for Thinking about Counterarguments "On the Other Hand: The Role of Antithetical Writing in First Year Composition Courses" Rhetorical Strategies: Building Compelling Argumentsįailures in Evidence: When Even "Lots of Quotes" Can't Save an Argument "Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources"Įvaluating Newspaper and Magazine Articles Types of Sources: Primary, Secondary, TertiaryĪn Introduction to Academic Search Completeīasic Guidelines for Academic Research Database Searches Late Revisions : Adding, Enhancing and Refining ContentĬoming Up With a Research Strategy: Using Wikipedia (!?)Ĭoming Up with a Research Strategy: Types of Sources Peer Review: Offer Perspectives, Not Directives Early Revisions : You Have So Much Room to Grow!
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |