Claim
- Clear and focused
- Not wordy
- A claim defines your paper’s goals, direction, and scope, and is supported by evidence, quotations, argumentation, expert opinion, statistics, and telling details.
- A good claim is specific. It makes a focused argument (MTV's popularity is waning because it no longer plays music videos) rather than a general one (MTV sucks).
- A claim is the main argument of an essay. It is probably the single most important part of an academic paper. The complexity, effectiveness, and quality of the entire paper hinges on the claim. If your claim is boring or obvious, the rest of the paper probably will be too.
Resources to Help Teach Claim
On this page is a variety of examples of assignments teachers can use to facilitate student learning of the CBEAR structure. Hover over or look underneath the picture for a brief description. Click the pictures to be sent to a Google document of the pictures so you can see more detail and then you can make your own copy to edit.
On this page is a variety of examples of assignments teachers can use to facilitate student learning of the CBEAR structure. Hover over or look underneath the picture for a brief description. Click the pictures to be sent to a Google document of the pictures so you can see more detail and then you can make your own copy to edit.