On September 26, I attended a Evidence, Analysis, and Claims Workshop. I expected many people to attend but instead there were only seven individuals. I also had expected that the people who would be attending, would be freshman so I was surprised when some of the students said that they were already graduates.
When I arrived, I thought the workshop was going to be a strict lesson that wouldn’t leave much room for discussions. When the professor entered my idea changed when she acted so care-free. She made us introduce ourselves and talked in a casual tone. She wanted to learn more about us and what we were hoping to learn in this workshop.
The professor begins with the basics starting with definitions of the words evidence, analysis, and claims. While these are words we were really familiar with, she uses these definitions to relate and connect them to each other. It gave us a better idea of how these three words can be seen in a text.
When practicing to recognize the use of the three words in a text, it became obvious that identifying the claim was not so simple. It was very easy to mix up when the text was using analysis versus a claim.
The lesson focused on being given evidence and coming up with our own analysis and claims. One of the examples is a pie chart on Stop and Frisk data. Given this information we came up with analysis like “Stop and Frisk does not correlate with arrests.” We were able to come up with a claim based on that which is “Stop and Frisk is an ineffective policy.”
Although the words evidence, analysis, and claim seem to be simple, this workshop made me realize how essential they are when reading and writing. Being able to recognize the use of these words in a text can really help the reader understand what the author is trying to say.
