Week 23: Week 23 — Exposition Models III: Claim Then Support
Week of Mon, Feb 22 · week closes Sun, Feb 28
This week's items
Exact due times are in Canvas. Late work accepted at 10% per day; assessed work not accepted late. Vocabulary quizzes are unannounced and cannot be made up.
Know these cold
- The claim-then-support structure states the general claim first and then provides specific evidence and explanation. The reader knows where the paragraph is going; each subsequent sentence earns the opening claim.
- This is the standard academic paragraph structure — topic sentence, evidence, reasoning, closing — because it is navigable, efficient, and easy to verify. A reader can skim the topic sentence of each paragraph and follow the argument's spine.
- The topic sentence is a mini-thesis for the paragraph: specific, defensible, and requiring support. A topic sentence that could apply to any paragraph in any essay is too vague and earns no trust from the reader.
- Front-loading emphasis: by placing the claim first, the writer ensures that even a reader who skims the paragraph knows its content. The emphasis belongs on the opening claim, not on its evidence.
- To posit a claim is to put it forward as a starting point for further argument — the premise from which the rest of the paragraph proceeds. Positing establishes the claim as a working assumption rather than an already-proven fact.
- Cogency is the quality of an argument that is both logically sound and persuasive to a reasonable audience. A cogent paragraph is not merely correct — it is compelling because the evidence and reasoning together make the claim feel unavoidable.
- The difference between assertion and demonstration: the topic sentence asserts; the body sentences demonstrate. The movement from assertion to demonstration is the essential structure of deductive exposition.
- Closing sentence function: the final sentence of a paragraph should reinforce the topic sentence with earned insight — not merely restate it, but show the reader what the evidence means in relation to the opening claim.
Meerk's quiz — open the Week 23 gate
10 questions, no time limit. 85% on your first attempt in a 24-hour window opens the gate. Retakes inside the window are practice — they help you learn, they don't count. Work alone; the point is to know it, not to have seen it.
Dinner Table Question
Ask at home: If you state your conclusion first and then explain why, what does the reader gain that they would not get from the reverse order?
En español: Si enuncias tu conclusión primero y luego explicas por qué, ¿qué gana el lector que no obtendría del proceso inverso?