AP Lang — claim, evidence and reasoning

Half the marks on this exam go to writing arguments, and the multiple-choice section is largely a test of whether you can see how one is put together. These ten questions work through that, one move at a time.

They start with the distinction everything else depends on: which of four sentences is actually arguable, as against true, or a matter of taste. Then evidence — which of four findings bears on the claim, and what to call it when the evidence measures something adjacent instead. A school uniform policy defended with figures about shop sales is the clean case of that, and it is worth noticing how respectable a number can look while being about the wrong thing.

Then the sentence that turns three facts into an argument rather than a list, which is what a line of reasoning is. Then the strongest objection a fair opponent would raise — and the point of that question is that strength is not about tone. Preference, cost and custom all lose to a set of figures showing that most of the crime a policy is meant to prevent happens at a time the policy does not touch.

Then qualification, correlation against cause, generalisation from three people at one bus stop, and a word that means one thing in a premise and another in the conclusion. That last one carries two distractors that name real weaknesses in the same paragraph — weaknesses which are simply not the one being asked about, which is a distinction the exam makes constantly.

The set closes with the question that decides a great many marks: which sentence would most strengthen the argument, where the tempting answer says the same thing again, only louder.

Everything is invented and nothing is partisan. No politician is named, no election is mentioned, and every example comes from ordinary public argument — transport, housing, work, libraries, markets.

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• Tell an arguable claim from a statement of fact or of taste
• Choose evidence that bears on the claim actually made, and name the gap when evidence measures something adjacent
• Write the sentence that connects evidence to a claim, rather than listing the evidence again
• Judge which objection is strongest by how much of the argument it removes
• Qualify an over-broad claim without emptying it
• Say what would be needed to turn a correlation into a supported causal claim, and what too small a sample does to a conclusion
• Spot a word used in two senses across an argument, and distinguish that fault from other real weaknesses in the same paragraph

A writer argues that the city's parks should be locked at night in order to reduce crime. Which of these is the strongest objection a fair opponent could raise?