AP® English Language and Composition review sheet from Aim for Five (aimforfive.com/lang/units/2/2-3)
Unit 2 · Topic 2.3
2.3 Choosing evidence strategically
Writers pick evidence for the job it does with a particular audience: to illustrate, clarify, set a mood, give an example, link an idea to something familiar, or make a point bigger. The right piece of evidence makes an argument hold together, matters to the people reading it, and makes them trust the person who chose it.
Key terms
- relevant evidence
- illustrate
- exemplify
- amplify
- associate
Evidence has jobs
Evidence isn't just proof. Writers choose each piece because it does something specific for the argument. When you analyze evidence, name its job.
| Job | What it does | Quick example |
|---|---|---|
| Illustrate | Gives a picture of an idea | A description of a crowded classroom to show overcrowding |
| Clarify | Makes a confusing idea clear | Explaining a tax rule with a sample paycheck |
| Set a mood | Creates a feeling that colors the argument | Opening a speech about a disaster with silence and a single image |
| Exemplify | Offers a case of the general claim | Naming one town where a ban on plastic bags worked |
| Associate | Links the idea to something the audience already knows or values | Comparing a new movement to the American Revolution |
| Amplify | Makes a point bigger or more urgent | Following one story with the number of people it represents |
Why selection matters
Strategic evidence does three things at once. It makes the reasoning sound, because the evidence actually fits the claim. It reaches the audience's emotions and values, because it's the kind of evidence they care about. And it builds the writer's credibility, because careful choices suggest a careful thinker.
Weak selection does the opposite. Evidence that's off-topic, out of date or from a source the audience distrusts can sink an argument even if the claim is right.
Same claim, different evidence
Imagine arguing that your high school should start later. For a group of parents, you might stress health research and the danger of drowsy teen drivers. For the school board, you might stress attendance and grades. For students, you might describe the 6 a.m. alarm everyone knows. The claim never changes; the evidence changes because the audience does.
Reading a writer's evidence choices
- Ask why this evidence and not some other kind. What would be lost if it were replaced by a statistic, or a story?
- Ask who would find this evidence convincing, and why.
- Ask where the evidence is placed. Evidence near the start often sets a mood; evidence near the end often amplifies.
- Ask what the evidence leaves out. A writer who cites only the successes of a policy is choosing, too.
- Ask whether the evidence is the kind this audience trusts: data for officials, stories for a general crowd, scripture or founding documents for readers who revere them.
Worked examples
Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.
- Example 1
Thoreau's receipt for a house
In Walden (1854), Henry David Thoreau, who argued that people spend their lives working to pay for more than they need, lists what his small cabin cost, item by item, starting with "Boards... $8.03½" and ending "In all... $28.12½." He then adds: "At Cambridge College the mere rent of a student's room, which is only a little larger than my own, is thirty dollars each year." (Cambridge College is Harvard.) What job does this evidence do, and why might it work on his readers?
Show the solutionHide the solution
- Step 1: Name the claim: people can live simply and cheaply if they stop buying what they don't need.
- Step 2: Name the evidence type: an itemized cost list, down to half-cents, plus a comparison to college rent.
- Step 3: Name the jobs. The list exemplifies the claim with a real case. The comparison amplifies it: his whole house cost less than one year's rent for a student room. It also associates the idea with something his educated readers knew well, the cost of college.
- Step 4: Explain why it works on the audience: precise numbers sound like a careful accountant, not a dreamer, which builds credibility with practical New England readers.
Answer: Model paragraph: Thoreau does not just claim that a simple life is affordable; he hands readers the receipt. By listing each cost down to the half-cent and totaling it at "$28.12½," he gives his argument the precision of an account book, which makes him sound practical rather than dreamy. He then amplifies the point by comparing his house to a student's room at Cambridge, whose "mere rent" of "thirty dollars each year" is more than his whole home cost. Because many of his readers knew the price of a college education, the comparison makes his claim concrete and a little embarrassing for anyone who assumes comfort must be expensive.
Common mistakes
- Saying evidence "supports the argument" without naming its job: does it illustrate, amplify, associate, or something else?
- Choosing evidence you find interesting instead of evidence your audience will find convincing.
- Piling up several pieces of evidence that all do the same job when one well-chosen piece would be stronger.
On the exam
- Writing questions often ask which piece of evidence would best support a claim for a particular audience or purpose. Match the evidence to both.
- In the argument essay, pick examples your reader is likely to recognize and respect, then explain the job each one does.
Connected topics
Videos
Check yourself
4 questions on 2.3 Choosing evidence strategically. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.
Booker T. Washington, a formerly enslaved educator who led Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, speech at the opening of the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia, September 18, 1895, as printed in his autobiography Up from Slavery (1901). The audience was mostly white Southerners, with Black listeners seated separately, and newspapers across the country reported the speech. Some text is omitted between paragraphs 1 and 2 and between paragraphs 2 and 3, and ellipses mark omitted text within paragraph 3.
The story of the ship lost at sea (paragraph 2) functions primarily to
Washington contrasts "the eight millions of Negroes whose habits you know" with newcomers "of foreign birth and strange tongue and habits" most likely in order to
Written for this practice set: a student's draft of a proposal from the school's environmental club. Harmon High and its staff are invented.
The writer plans to send the proposal to the principal, who must approve any new spending. Which part of the draft is likely to matter most to this reader, and why?
Sentence 2 (reproduced below) appears in the introduction. "The trays are used for twenty minutes and then sit in a landfill for centuries." The writer most likely includes this sentence to
0 of 4 answered