IDENTIFYING AND ANALYZING CLAIMS Determining Explicit and Implicit Information Critical reading also means that you are able to distinguish the information that is clearly stated (explicit) in the text from ideas that are suggested (implicit). This will help you make inferences about what you read. Defining CLAIMS Knowing how to identify explicit and implicit information will help you in one of the most important skills needed in critical reading: evaluating the claims made by an author. This involves going back to the text to recognize the writer’s arguments and evidence so you can begin judging the writer’s work. Whenever you read something, you find yourself looking for the writer’s point or position regarding the chosen topic. That point is also known as the claim, or the central argument or thesis statement of the text. This claim is what the writer tries to prove in the text by providing details, explanations, and other types of evidence. As such it is usually found in the introduction or in the first few paragraphs of the text. The claim is the most important part of the text. The quality and complexity of the reading depend on the claim, because the claim defines the paper’s direction and scope. The claim is a sentence that summarizes the most important thing that the writer wants to say as a result of his/her thinking, reading, or writing.
The following are the characteristics of good claims: 1. A claim should be argumentative and debatable. - When a writer makes a claim, he/she is making a case for a particular perspective on the topic. Readers expect to be able to raise objections to your claim, and they can only raise objections if the claim is something that can be reasonably challenged. Claims that are only factual or based on opinion, thus, are not debatable. 2. A claim should be specific and focused. - If the claim is unfocused, the paper will be too broad in scope and will lack direction and a clear connection to the support provided. It may also lead to overgeneralizations and vague assertions. 3. A claim should be interesting and engaging. - It should hook the reader, who may or may be not agree with you, to encourage them to consider your perspective and learn something new from you. 4. A claim should be logical. - It should result from reasonable weighing of support provided. Here are some questions to help you determine the writer’s claim while you are reading a t ext: What is the author’s main point? What is the author’s position regarding it? Types of Claims: 1. Claims of Fact – it states a quantifiable assertion, or a measurable topic. They assert something has existed, exists, or will exist based on data. They rely on reliable sources or systematic procedures to be validated; this is what makes them different from inferences. Claims of fact usually answer a “what” question. When determining whether something is a claim of fact, the following questions are useful: Is this issue related to a possible cause or effect? Is this statement true or false? How can its truthfulness be verified? Is this claim controversial or debatable?
2. Claims of Value – it assert something that can be qualified. They consist of arguments about moral, philosophical, or aesthetic topics. These types of topics try to prove that some values are more or less desirable compared to others. They make judgments, based on certain standards, on whether something is right or wrong, good or bad, or something similar. Claims of value attempt to explain how problems, situations, or issues ought to be valued. To discover these explanations, you may ask the following questions: Which claims endorse what is good or right? What qualities should be considered good? Why? Which of these values contend with others? Which ones are more important, and why? Whose standards are used? What are some concrete examples of such values?
3. Claims of Policy – it posit that specific actions should be chosen as solutions to a particular problem. You can easily identify a claim of policy because they begin with ‘should,’ ‘ought,’ or ‘must .’ Claims of policy because they defend actionable plans, usually answer “how” questions. The following questions will be useful in evaluating a claim of policy. Does the claim suggest a specific remedy to solve the problem? Is the policy clearly defined? Is the need for the policy established? Is the policy the best one available? For whom? According to whose st andards?
How does the policy solve the problem?
IDENTIFYING THE CONTEXT OF THE TEXT DEVELOPMENT
Being a critical reader also involves understanding that texts are always developed with a certain context. A text is neither written nor read in vacuum; its meaning and interpretation are affected by a given set of circumstances. Thus, context is defined as the social, cultural, political, historical, and other related circumstances that surround the text and form the terms from which it can be better understood and evaluated. Knowledge of the text’s context he lps in appreciating the text’s message more deeply. In discovering a reading’s context, you may ask questions like: When was the work written? What were the circumstances that produced it? What issues does it deal with? Another important technique in analyzing the context of a text’s development is defining its intertextual link to another text. Intertextuality is the modelling of a text’s meaning by another text. It is defined as the connections between language, images, characters, themes, or subjects depending on their similarities in language, genre, or discourse. This is seen when an author borrows and transforms a prior text, or when you read one text. This view recognizes that the text is always influenced by previous texts, influenced by previous texts and in turn anticipates future texts. A text contains many layers of accumulated cultural, historical, and social knowledge which continually adds to and affects one another. Thus, intertextuality becomes a dialogue among different texts and interpretations of the writer, the audience, and the current and earlier cultural contexts. Meanwhile, hypertext is a relatively new way of reading a text online. Traditionally, reading was viewed as a linear process, where you read from the beginning until the end. However, the advent of the internet and technology has created new ways of reading and processing a tex t, which includes hypertext. Hypertext, therefore, is a nonlinear way of showing information. Hypertext connects topics on a screen to related information, graphics, videos, and music – information is not simply related to text. This information appears as links and is usually accessed by clicking. The reader can jump to more information about a topic, which in turn may have more links. This opens up the reader to a wid er horizon of information or to a new dire ction. A reader can skim through sections of a text, freely jumping from one part to another depending on what aspect of the text interests him/her. Thus, in reading with hypertext, you are given more flexibility and personalization because you get to select the order in which you read the text and focus on information that is rele vant to your background and interests. Therefore, you create your own meaning out of the material.
REFERENCE: Reading and Writing Skills, pp.20-23
