Identify supporting evidence in a text
Key notes :
When making claims or other arguable statements in your writing, make sure you can support them with concrete evidence from reliable sources. By drawing upon such evidence, you make your writing more accurate. In addition, by quoting or citing such evidence when appropriate, you avoid plagiarism and make your writing more convincing.
For example, when writing an essay about a piece of literature, you might support a claim by quoting evidence from the text:
Claim: Patrick was not fearless; rather, he took action despite his fear. Evidence: ‘Patrick bit his nails anxiously. Finally, he took a deep breath, nodded to himself with conviction, and burst into the room.’
Similarly, when writing a report about a factual topic, you might support a claim by citing evidence from a relevant and credible source:
Claim: The majority of Indian adults are not married. Evidence: A 2011 poll found that 45.6% of Indian adults are married.
Learn with an example
➡️ The following passage is about the American farm worker movement.
Select the best evidence to support the statement ‘The United Farm Workers of America served more than just farm workers.’ There may be more than one correct choice.
Under the leadership of César E. Chávez and others such as Dolores Huerta and Larry Itliong, along with support from millions of Americans, the farm worker movement joined forces with other reform movements to achieve unprecedented successes that greatly improved working and living conditions and wages for farm workers. During the 1970s the United Farm Workers of America (UFW) grew and expanded from its early roots as a union for farm workers to also become a national voice for the poor and disenfranchised. The enduring legacies of César E. Chávez and the farm worker movement include passage of California’s Agricultural Labour Relations Act of 1975, the first law in the U.S. that recognised farm workers’ collective bargaining rights.
Adapted from National Park Service, ‘History & Culture – César E. Chávez National Monument’
The text in bold is the best evidence to support the statement ‘The United Farm Workers of America served more than just farm workers.’
Under the leadership of César E. Chávez and others such as Dolores Huerta and Larry Itliong, along with support from millions of Americans, the farm worker movement joined forces with other reform movements to achieve unprecedented successes that greatly improved working and living conditions and wages for farm workers. During the 1970s the United Farm Workers of America (UFW) grew and expanded from its early roots as a union for farm workers to also become a national voice for the poor and disenfranchised. The enduring legacies of César E. Chávez and the farm worker movement include passage of California’s Agricultural Labour Relations Act of 1975, the first law in the U.S. that recognised farm workers’ collective bargaining rights.
According to that text, the UFW eventually became a ‘voice for the poor and disenfranchised’, not just farmworkers.
➡️ Select the best evidence to support the statement.
‘Planets and moons are not the only places where one can find water in our solar system.’ There may be more than one correct choice.
Ice is common in our solar system, from deposits at the poles of Mercury and the Moon to ice-covered moons and rings around distant Jupiter and Saturn. Scientists are studying ice on Earth and on other planets, in part because ice deposits could be a source of water for future explorers in the solar system.
While the most common type of ice in our solar system is water ice, there are also many other types of ice. Mars’ poles have abundant amounts of frozen carbon dioxide (also called dry ice), and comets have frozen ammonia and methane in addition to frozen water and other ices. Saturn’s moon Titan is famous for its methane, which can exist not only as a liquid and gas at Titan’s surface temperatures and pressures, but also as solid ice.
Adapted from NASA, ‘Ice in the Solar System: Ice!’
The text in bold is the best evidence to support the statement ‘Planets and moons are not the only places where one can find water in our solar system.’
While the most common type of ice in our solar system is water ice, there are also many other types of ice. Mars’ poles have abundant amounts of frozen carbon dioxide (also called dry ice), and comets have frozen ammonia and methane in addition to frozen water and other ices. Saturn’s moon Titan is famous for its methane, which can exist not only as a liquid and gas at Titan’s surface temperatures and pressures, but also as solid ice.
According to the text, comets also contain frozen water.
➡️ In the following passage, the character Win Everett is contemplating his career while having breakfast with his wife.
Select the best evidence to support the statement ‘Win Everett was forced to leave his job.’ There may be more than one correct choice.
We tend to draw together to seek mutual solace for our disease. This is what he thought at the breakfast table in the sweet old house, turn-of-the-century, with the curved porch, the oak posts furled in trumpet vines. He had time to think, time to become an old man in aspic, in sculptured soap, quaint and white. It was not unusual for men in the clandestine service to retire at age fifty-one. A pension plan had been approved by some committee and a statement had been issued about the onerous and dangerous lives led by such people; the family problems; the transient nature of assignments. But Win Everett’s retirement wasn’t exactly voluntary. There was the business in Coral Gables. There were visits to the polygraph machine.
From Don DeLillo, Libra. Copyright 2006 by Don DeLillo
The text in bold is the best evidence to support the statement ‘Win Everett was forced to leave his job.’
We tend to draw together to seek mutual solace for our disease. This is what he thought at the breakfast table in the sweet old house, turn-of-the-century, with the curved porch, the oak posts furled in trumpet vines. He had time to think, time to become an old man in aspic, in sculptured soap, quaint and white. It was not unusual for men in the clandestine service to retire at age fifty-one. A pension plan had been approved by some committee and a statement had been issued about the onerous and dangerous lives led by such people; the family problems; the transient nature of assignments. But Win Everett’s retirement wasn’t exactly voluntary. There was the business in Coral Gables. There were visits to the polygraph machine.
The author says that ‘Win Everett’s retirement wasn’t exactly voluntary’, implying that Win may not have wanted to retire.
let’s practice!
Select the best evidence to support the statement ‘Patty is a very thoughtful person.’ There may be more than one correct choice.
There were people with whom her style of self-deprecation didn’t sit well—who detected a kind of condescension in it, as if Patty, in exaggerating her own minor defects, were too obviously trying to spare the feelings of less accomplished homemakers. But most people found her humility sincere or at least amusing, and it was in any case hard to resist a woman whom your own children liked so much and who remembered not only their birthdays but yours, too, and came to your back door with a plate of cookies or a card.
From Jonathan Franzen, Freedom. Copyright 2010 by Jonathan Franzen
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