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How Wide Is the Claim
A wide net catching nothing, a small net full.
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The bigger net brings home less.
Learner narrows a claim to the scope their support can carry, and stops making claims that one counterexample destroys.
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Six claims. Five collapse under one counterexample.
All young people prefer online learning. Is there a counterexample?
The cost of all, four ways to narrow, and why that is stronger.
A universal claim is refuted by a single exception.
All young people prefer online learning.
The reader thinks of one student who hated it, and the claim is gone.
That happens before your support has even arrived.
A wide net catching nothing, a small net full.
The bigger net brings home less.
Twelve claims. Two of the defensible ones look wrong.
Sort each item into the correct category
Eight claims, each with a method named. Two need nothing.
(by group) All young people prefer online learning. →
(by degree) Technology has destroyed face-to-face communication. →
(by place) Every government should ban private cars. →
Human beings need water to survive. →
(by time) Tourism ruins historic cities. →
(by group and degree) Homework always harms children. →
More than an hour of homework a night harms children under eleven. →
(by group) Everyone benefits from learning a second language. →
Narrow a wide claim, then support the narrowed version.
Wide claim: social media has damaged young people's ability to concentrate.
Line 1: narrow it — by group, place, degree or time. Lines 2–3: support your narrowed version.
Your support has to carry the scope you claimed. Narrow far enough that it can.
Name the narrowing you used.
It must carry the scope you claimed.