11 Strategy: Evaluating Supporting Claims of Texts
Strategy: Evaluating Supporting Claims of Texts
Once a thesis statement is established, you as a reader will know what a text is claiming. That claim defines what the author wants you to do, think, or believe by the time you finish reading his or her work. A significant claim answers a question that readers care about; it leads readers to think not, That’s obvious or I already knew that, but Oh, you’ll have to prove that; and it raises the kinds of issues that can be settled by factual evidence.
Using the STAR Method to Evaluate Appeals to Logic
Mapping or diagramming the arguments you read in a text may help you judge whether a claim is adequately supported. Applying the STAR Criteria—Sufficiency, Typicality, Accuracy, and Relevance—is one such technique for assessing whether an argument has sufficient depth and clarity.
|
Measure |
Question |
Examples & Notes |
|
Sufficiency |
Is there enough evidence cited to support the conclusion? |
Generally, only “strongly” and not “weakly” supported conclusions should be accepted. The more controversial a claim is, the more evidence authors should provide before expecting an audience to accept it. If the evidence is not sufficient, the author may need to modify or qualify the claim, by stating that something is true ‘sometimes’ rather than ‘always’. |
|
Typicality |
Is the cited evidence typical or representative? |
If an author makes a claim about a whole group but the evidence is based on a small or biased sample of that group, the evidence is not “typical.” Similar problems stem from relying just on personal experiences (anecdotal evidence) and from “cherry picking” data by citing only the parts that support a conclusion while ignoring parts that might challenge it. |
|
Accuracy |
Is the cited evidence up to date and accurate? |
Authors using polls, studies and statistics must ask whether the data were produced in a biased way and also ask whether the sample was large and representative of its target population so that results were outside the “margin of error.” (Margin of error: If a sample is too small or not well chosen, results may be meaningless because they may represent random variation.) |
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Relevance |
Is the cited evidence directly relevant to the claim(s) it is being used to support? |
An author may supply lots of evidence, but the evidence may support something different from what the person is actually claiming. If the evidence is not relevant to the claim, the author may need to modify or qualify the claim—or even to acknowledge that the claim is indefensible. |
Built-In Practice: Evaluating Supporting Claims
Using the Aladdin essay, evaluate the supporting claims with the STAR method.
