Unit 1 · Topic 1.4

1.4 Claims that need a defense

A claim is a statement that a reasonable person could dispute, so it needs to be defended with evidence and reasoning. Good claims are worth arguing about: they're specific, they have stakes, and they aren't just facts everyone already accepts.

Key terms

claim
argument
position
defensible

What makes something a claim

A claim is a position. It asks readers to believe something they might not believe yet, so the writer owes them support. A writer usually makes one main claim, the thesis, and several smaller claims that hold it up.

The quickest test: could a thoughtful person say "I disagree"? If yes, it's a claim. If the statement can simply be checked and nobody would argue, it's a fact. Facts are useful as evidence, but they can't be the point of an argument.

Claim or fact?

Statement	Claim or fact?	Why
The Declaration of Independence was adopted in July 1776.	Fact	It can be checked; nobody needs persuading.
High schools should start no earlier than 8:30 a.m.	Claim	People disagree, and it needs reasons and evidence.
Many teenagers own smartphones.	Fact	True, but there's nothing to argue.
Smartphones have weakened teenagers' friendships more than they've helped them.	Claim	It's debatable and needs support.
Thoreau spent a night in jail for refusing to pay a tax.	Fact	It's a historical record.

Claims worth making

Some claims are technically debatable but still weak. "Social media has pros and cons" is hard to disagree with because it doesn't take a side. "Pets are nice" takes a side nobody cares to fight about. A strong claim makes readers curious, has real stakes, and is narrow enough to defend in the space you have.

Compare: "School is important" with "Schools should grade homework for completion, not accuracy, because practice is where students are supposed to make mistakes." The second one invites an argument and tells you what kind of support it will need.

A claim also has to fit the evidence you can actually bring. On the argument essay you have no sources except what you know, so a claim about your town, your school or a period of history you've studied is easier to defend than a claim about "all of human history."

Kinds of claims

You won't be asked to label these, but they help you see what support a claim needs. A claim of fact argues something is or isn't true when that's in dispute ("Later start times improve attendance"). A claim of value judges something as good, bad, fair or wrong ("Standardized tests are an unfair measure of ability"). A claim of policy says what should be done ("Our town should ban gas-powered leaf blowers"). Policy claims often depend on fact and value claims along the way.

Worked examples

Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.

Example 1
Spotting a claim that needs defending
Henry David Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" (1849) opens: "I heartily accept the motto,—'That government is best which governs least;' and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe—'That government is best which governs not at all;' and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have." What is Thoreau's claim, and what would he need to prove to defend it?
Show the solutionHide the solution
1. Step 1: Find the position. Thoreau accepts a popular saying (less government is better) and pushes it further: no government at all would be best, once people are ready for it.
2. Step 2: Test it: could a reasonable reader disagree? Easily. Most readers believe governments protect rights and keep order, so this needs defending.
3. Step 3: Ask what support it would need: reasons that government does harm or gets in the way, examples of that harm, and an explanation of what "prepared for it" means.
4. Step 4: Notice the qualification. "When men are prepared for it" limits the claim. Thoreau isn't calling for abolishing government tomorrow, which makes the claim harder to dismiss.
Answer: Thoreau claims that the best government is one that governs as little as possible, and ideally not at all once people are ready. Because most readers assume government is necessary, he must show how government causes harm or interferes with conscience, and he limits the claim with "when men are prepared for it" so it reads as a goal rather than an immediate demand.
Example 2
Turning a fact into a claim
Practice task (written for this page): Turn this fact into a claim worth defending: "Many high school students work part-time jobs during the school year."
Show the solutionHide the solution
1. Step 1: Ask what's debatable about the fact: is it good or bad, and should anything change?
2. Step 2: Take a side and add a reason, so the claim tells readers what you'll need to prove.
3. Step 3: Keep it narrow enough to support in one essay.
Answer: Claim: "Part-time jobs during the school year do students more good than harm, because they teach time management and responsibility that classes rarely do, as long as the job stays under about 15 hours a week." Someone could disagree, and the claim tells you what evidence you'll need.

Common mistakes

Using a fact as a thesis. "Pollution affects the environment" can't be argued; say what should be done or what matters most.
Fence-sitting: "There are good and bad sides to both." That isn't a position, and on the essays it won't earn the thesis point.
Making a claim so broad ("Technology ruins everything") that no amount of evidence could support it.

On the exam

Reading questions may ask which sentence best states a writer's claim. Look for the sentence the rest of the passage is trying to prove.
Writing questions may ask which sentence best introduces a paragraph's claim. Choose the one that takes a clear, specific position that the paragraph's evidence supports.

Connected topics

Videos

Writing Effective Claims for AP Lang Q1 & Q3 | Coach Hall Writes
Coach Hall WritesWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
What is an argument? | Reading | Khan Academy
Khan AcademyWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
AP English Language Lesson 2: Claims & Evidence
Leandra FergusonWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
Claim, Evidence, Warrant | Essay Writing | The Nature of Writing
The Nature of WritingWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
Claims, Evidence, and Reasoning.
K20 CenterWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Check yourself

4 questions on 1.4 Claims that need a defense. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.

Fellow-Citizens—Pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits, and express devout gratitude for the blessings, resulting from your independence to us?

But, such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this day rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin!

My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave’s point of view. Standing there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July.

Frederick Douglass, a formerly enslaved abolitionist and newspaper editor, speech at an Independence Day gathering in Rochester, New York, July 5, 1852, to which he had been invited as the speaker. From the extract printed in Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). Some text is omitted between paragraphs 1 and 2 and between paragraphs 2 and 3.

Question 1 of 4

Which of the following best states the claim Douglass makes in paragraph 3?

It is ten years and over, now, since that line divided New York's population evenly. To-day three-fourths of its people live in the tenements, and the nineteenth century drift of the population to the cities is sending ever-increasing multitudes to crowd them. The fifteen thousand tenant houses that were the despair of the sanitarian in the past generation have swelled into thirty-seven thousand, and more than twelve hundred thousand persons call them home. The one way out he saw—rapid transit to the suburbs—has brought no relief. We know now that there is no way out; that the "system" that was the evil offspring of public neglect and private greed has come to stay, a storm-centre forever of our civilization. Nothing is left but to make the best of a bad bargain.

What the tenements are and how they grow to what they are, we shall see hereafter. The story is dark enough, drawn from the plain public records, to send a chill to any heart. If it shall appear that the sufferings and the sins of the "other half," and the evil they breed, are but as a just punishment upon the community that gave it no other choice, it will be because that is the truth. The boundary line lies there because, while the forces for good on one side vastly outweigh the bad—it were not well otherwise—in the tenements all the influences make for evil; because they are the hot-beds of the epidemics that carry death to rich and poor alike; the nurseries of pauperism and crime that fill our jails and police courts; that throw off a scum of forty thousand human wrecks to the island asylums and workhouses year by year; that turned out in the last eight years a round half million beggars to prey upon our charities; that maintain a standing army of ten thousand tramps with all that that implies; because, above all, they touch the family life with deadly moral contagion. This is their worst crime, inseparable from the system. That we have to own it the child of our own wrong does not excuse it, even though it gives it claim upon our utmost patience and tenderest charity.

What are you going to do about it? is the question of to-day. It was asked once of our city in taunting defiance by a band of political cutthroats, the legitimate outgrowth of life on the tenement-house level. Law and order found the answer then and prevailed. With our enormously swelling population held in this galling bondage, will that answer always be given? It will depend on how fully the situation that prompted the challenge is grasped. Forty per cent. of the distress among the poor, said a recent official report, is due to drunkenness. But the first legislative committee ever appointed to probe this sore went deeper down and uncovered its roots. The "conclusion forced itself upon it that certain conditions and associations of human life and habitation are the prolific parents of corresponding habits and morals," and it recommended "the prevention of drunkenness by providing for every man a clean and comfortable home." Years after, a sanitary inquiry brought to light the fact that "more than one-half of the tenements with two-thirds of their population were held by owners who made the keeping of them a business, generally a speculation. The owner was seeking a certain percentage on his outlay, and that percentage very rarely fell below fifteen per cent., and frequently exceeded thirty.... The complaint was universal among the tenants that they were entirely uncared for, and that the only answer to their requests to have the place put in order by repairs and necessary improvements was that they must pay their rent or leave. The agent's instructions were simple but emphatic: 'Collect the rent in advance, or, failing, eject the occupants.'"

Jacob A. Riis, a newspaper reporter and photographer, How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York (1890), from the introduction. Just before this excerpt, Riis describes the tenements, crowded rental buildings where most poor New Yorkers lived, as the boundary line between comfortable New York and the "other half."

Question 2 of 4

Which of the following best states a claim that Riis makes in paragraph 2?

(1) At 3:30 every afternoon, the lights in the Westbrook High library go off, and a librarian politely asks the last few students to pack up. (2) For many of us, that is exactly when we need the library most. (3) The library has twenty-four computers and a quiet study room. (4) The school should keep the library open until 6:00 p.m. on weekdays.

(5) Not every student has a quiet place to study at home. (6) In a survey of 312 Westbrook students that our newspaper staff conducted in September, 41 percent said they share a bedroom, and 28 percent said they do not have reliable internet at home. (7) Students who stay for sports practice or work after school also have nowhere to finish assignments that require a computer. (8) Last spring, junior Dev Patel wrote most of his history research paper on his phone because the library closed before his practice ended.

(9) Keeping the library open would cost money, since a staff member would have to supervise. (10) However, the district already pays for an after-school bus at 5:45, so students who stay late would have a ride home. (11) Two other high schools in our district already keep their libraries open until 6:00. (12) If they can find a way, so can we.

Written for this practice set: a student's draft of an opinion column for the school newspaper.

Question 3 of 4

Sentence 3 (reproduced below) states a fact rather than a claim. "The library has twenty-four computers and a quiet study room." Which version of sentence 3 best turns it into a claim that supports the column's argument?

Question 4 of 4

The writer wants to revise sentence 10 so that it responds directly to the concern about cost raised in sentence 9. Which version best accomplishes this goal?

0 of 4 answered