Claim-building Exercise

The purpose of today’s in-class activity is simply to help people to identify appropriate topics and evidence to emphasize in their papers. In other words, it’s a brain-storming exercise (or what communications specialists would call an invention exercise) rather than a writing critique. (Next time, you’ll be evaluating how well the writer has actually presented the material in terms of organization, paragraphing, and so forth.)

Today, then, simply help your classmates to figure out what it’s best to write about, and how much they need to say about each claim, and how they can support their claims with the available evidence.

Writer: In about five minutes, read through the claims that you plan to write about, then show people what evidence you plan to use to support the claim.

Respondents: Comment on the following issues, as well as any other issues that you believe will help the writer.

• Is this claim significant? In other words, does it go beyond the most obvious claims that could be made about scientific writing in general? Does it help readers to understand something new about the discipline and its communication practices?
  
• Does the evidence actually support the claim? Is the writer referring to useful pieces of information from the interview, the research journals, or some other reliable source?
  
• Is it clear that the writer’s claims present a “picture” of the discipline? Is there some other topic that you believe the writer should discuss?