Presenting Your Evidence

Presenting Your Evidence

In your paper you must demonstrate why a given piece of evidence supports your thesis, claim or position. You must explain the reasoning process by which they are logically connected. (This is called the Toulmin method where the explanations are referred to as warrants.)

If I walk up to you and scream “Immigrants deserve rights” in your face. I am not arguing, I am fighting. However, when we stop to define the reasoning behind our statements, and attach those reasons to evidence, we are now in a position where someone might agree with us.
As a writer you are very much the tour guide through a web of logic, through thought, so it is your job to describe and explain where we are and why we are stopping here (and how this relates to your overall purpose in the paper). While you want to avoid statements that clarify your process, (ex. Of bad writing: “I am now going to give you an example…”; “In all this research I did…”) you do want to clearly show and put into context the evidence and points you are making.

The Colo. State Univ. writing lab website, a leader in web references for writers, states, “First, for each claim that is debatable, or open to question, a reason is offered that supports the claim's validity. A warrant-consisting of a sentence or two-then follows, explaining the reason. Finally, evidence is supplied that supports connecting the reason to a given point or the overall claim of the paper.” Their organization is as follows:
From writing.colostate.edu
Using Subheadings and Transitions: An Example
Chunking text into sections according to where a new point is being made, a new reason in support of your thesis is offered, or a new opposing argument is being addressed helps establish coherence among the various parts of your argument. Using sub-headings to label these different sections will help the audience follow your argument.
In addition, transitions explaining why one section helps support the point made in the previous one or how the next point follows logically from the first helps the reader see more clearly how these points ultimately relate to the claim, or position being argued.
Thesis/Claim: Greenlife's proposal to ban all logging in rain forests should be supported.
Reason #1: It would help prevent global warming.

[This sentence then gets developed, followed by a transition leading to Reason #2.]
Transition between #1 and #2: Although global warming may be the most persuasive reason to stop logging in rainforests due to the effect it has on the entire planet's population, the effect on local culture, affecting a much smaller number of people, is just as important. Losing native habitats destroys ways of life which can never be replaced, displacing people and devastating cultures that can never be restored.

[Logic: both are equally important reasons to stop logging.]
Reason #2: Logging destroys indigenous lifestyles.

[This gets developed, followed by a transition leading to Reason #3.]
Transition between #2 and #3: Not only is the effect on indigenous cultures and global climate impossible to reverse but logging also has a lasting effect on the local environment that could have equally disastrous consequences. The erosion caused by logging results in a change in the ecosystem, particularly the loss of rich, fertile soil essential to both plant and animal life.

[Logic: human effects of global warming and loss of indigenous cultures are not the only considerations: effects on ecosystems are also consequences of logging.]
Reason #3: Logging produces erosion in the local environment.

[This gets developed, followed by a transition leading to Opposing Position #1.]
Transition between reason 3 and opposition #1: Of course, many have argued that the loss of plant life and soil should be considered necessary damages if they work in favor of increasing the quality of human life.

[Logic: Introduces opposing argument #1 and leads to its refutation.]
Opposition #1: The argument that human life is more important than plant life, however, simply does not hold up when considering that the devastation of an ecosystem also affects human life. These effects, as I've already shown, can be measured not only in terms of climate change and the loss of indigenous cultures, but also in terms of losses to farming and other local economic systems.

[Logic: Demonstrates that opposition to point 3 is not viable because of points 1, 2, and 3.]
Topic Sentences
Another good way to help an audience follow the logic of your argument is to use of topic sentences literally telling them how each point relates to the claim, clearly connecting them so that their isn't any question how or why they relate. In longer arguments, entire paragraphs can serve this purpose by explaining the connections between extended summaries of evidence or the logical arguments of sub-points to the main claim. Following are examples of each:
Claim/Thesis of Paper: Writing teachers fail to deal with multicultural issues to the detriment of their students.
Section One: An analysis of the weaknesses of current curricular approaches to writing
Transitional Paragraph tying analysis to thesis and next section: As the analysis above shows, none of the available curricular models address multiculturalism except in the most cursory manner. Worse, their very superficiality does more damage than good. By introducing the topic of writing for multiple communities, the pedagogies make an attempt to bring diversity into the classroom; yet their focus remains on teaching academic writing with standard usage and grammar. Although they admit that such teaching is only for this context, putting such emphasis on standard forms introduces the issue: which forms of writing have more power in society, something none of the pedagogies address. By putting forth the academic model as the one which must be taught and learned in schools, they implicitly devalue other forms. The failure to foreground these power issues, then, leads students of difference to conclude that although their language and forms of writing might be acceptable in certain places, they are not welcome in the places which count in society. The effect of such an implicit message can be devastating to maintaining cultural values and difference.
Section Two: Discussion of research on multicultural student reactions' to writing classes.
 

Warrants:
One of the best ways to demonstrate why a given piece of evidence supports the thesis, claim or position of an argument is to explain the reasoning process by which they are logically connected. In the Toulmin method, these explanations are referred to as warrants.
First, for each claim that is debatable, or open to question, a reason is offered that supports the claim's validity. A warrant-consisting of a sentence or two-then follows, explaining the reason. Finally, evidence is supplied that supports connecting the reason to a given point or the overall claim of the paper.
Thesis, Claim or Position
Grading should be optional in non-major courses.
Reason/Point #1
Non-major courses are designed to help students become intelligent, well-rounded citizens. If the goal of such courses is the exploration and acquisition of knowledge, grades only get in the way.
Warrant #1
Rather than learning for the sake of becoming a better person, grades encourage performance for the sake of a better GPA. The focus grading puts on performance undercuts learning opportunities when students choose courses according to what might be easiest rather than what they'd like to know more about. [Introduces why proof is relevant to point]
Evidence
For example, students polled at CSU in a College of Liberal Arts study cite the following reasons for choosing non-major courses:
1. Easy grading (80%)
2. Low quantity of work (60%)
3. What was available (40%)
4. Personality of teacher (30%)
5. Something they were interested in knowing more about (10%)
Similarly, in an interview I conducted with graduating seniors, only two of the 20 people I spoke with found their non-major courses valuable. The other 18 reported that non-major courses were a waste of time for a variety of reasons:
1. I'm never going to do anything with them.
2. I just took whatever wouldn't distract me from my major so I didn't work very hard in them, just studying enough to get an A on the test.
3. Non-major courses are a joke. Everyone I know took the simplest, stupidest, 100-level courses needed to fulfill the requirements. I can't even remember the ones I took now.
Warrant #2
Although not everyone in the interviews or the CLA poll cited grades explicitly as the reason for choosing easy, irrelevant, non-major courses, we can read such reasoning into many of the less explicit references as well. Clearly, students are not choosing courses based on what they can learn from them. Yet they are fairly consistent in their choices: 100-level courses with little work. Although laziness might be seen as the cause of such choices, it is just as likely that choosing according to the amount of work, selecting simple courses, or only studying for the exam are a result of the GPA system. Higher work loads and more complex topics obviously could mean receiving a lower grade; thus, they should be avoided. [Demonstrates how proof leads to point as necessary conclusion.]