Suppose you're arguing that towns should repair old public buildings rather than replace them, and one of your pieces of evidence is that your town restored the 1920s windows of its library instead of installing vinyl ones. You could tell that as a story (the afternoon you watched a carpenter rebuild a sash), lay it side by side with the vinyl option (cost, lifespan, look), or follow it forward to its consequences (what the restoration taught the town to try next). Each version proves something different. Topic 3.5 showed how to recognize these methods of development in someone else's argument; here you choose them for your own, and make each one argue.
Let the claim choose the method
Every claim implies a kind of proof, and the method of development is how you deliver it. Before you draft a body paragraph, look at what its claim actually asserts.
| If the claim says | The method that proves it | Example claim |
|---|---|---|
| What something really is, or isn't | Definition | "A library that charges late fees is not fully free." |
| That one thing leads to another | Cause-effect | "Cutting the late bus will shrink every after-school club." |
| That one option beats another | Comparison-contrast | "A restored wooden window outlasts a cheap vinyl one." |
| That something matters that readers haven't noticed | Description | "The underpass on Mill Road is the only way to the east-side park, and it has no lights." |
| That experience teaches what statistics can't | Narration with reflection | "You learn what a town budget is the first time you testify at a hearing." |
A complete essay usually uses several methods, roughly one per paragraph, and the sequence becomes your line of reasoning: a story to make the problem real, a comparison to show it isn't inevitable, a cause-effect paragraph to show what it costs.
The test of a choice is whether the method can produce the proof the claim needs. A single story can make a reader care, but it can't prove what "most students" experience. A definition can show that a policy breaks a principle, but not that it will waste money. When a method can't deliver what the claim promises, either change the method or narrow the claim. Topic 4.6 returns to comparison, definition, and description; the two methods that need the most care in this unit are narration and cause-effect.
Narration that argues
A narrative paragraph has two parts, the experience and the reflection, and the reflection is the part that scores. A story without one is evidence with no commentary, however well it is told.
Choose details for the claim. Every detail should either show something the reflection will name or make the moment believable. If the reflection will claim that repair teaches patience, the carpenter's forty minutes on one sash belong in the story; the color of his truck does not.
Keep the story short. In a forty-minute essay, three or four sentences of experience is usually enough. A story that runs half a page leaves no room for the reasoning.
Write the reflection in a different register. Shift from past to present tense, or from one person to people in general, so the reader can hear the move from evidence to claim: "I didn't understand it then, but..." or "Every old building in town has a version of that window." Then say what the experience shows and how it connects to the paragraph's claim and the thesis.
Close the one-case gap. If your claim is general, add a sentence that says why your story is typical or what makes it representative: a number, a second brief case, or a reason the pattern would hold elsewhere. Topic 3.5 showed how readers catch arguments that stretch one story into a rule; this sentence is how you avoid being caught.
Cause-effect that holds up
A cause-effect paragraph is only as strong as its weakest link. Four habits keep it sound.
- Show the mechanism. Say how the cause produces the effect. "Cutting the late bus will hurt clubs" asserts. "Students who live across the river have no other way home after 4:00, so they will quit anything that meets after the last bell" explains, and a reader can check the explanation.
- Deal with rival causes. If two things changed at once, say why yours is the one that matters, or claim less. Ignoring a cause your reader can see is the fastest way to lose them.
- Support every link in a chain. If you predict three steps out, give a reason for each step, not just the first.
- Fit the verb to the evidence. Caused claims more than contributed to, which claims more than came at the same time as. Pick the strongest verb your evidence supports, and no stronger. Unit 7 studies qualifying claims in depth.
The two other methods have one rule each worth knowing now. A comparison has to treat both subjects on the same points (cost against cost, lifespan against lifespan), or it proves nothing. A definition has to be one your reader could accept before seeing your conclusion, or it will read as rigged.
Commentary across the whole argument
Topic 1.6 covered commentary inside a paragraph: the sentences that explain how and why evidence supports a claim. Across an essay, commentary has a second job: explaining what each paragraph's conclusion adds to the thesis, and how it sets up the next paragraph. The last sentence or two of a body paragraph should state the paragraph's significance in terms of the thesis ("so the restoration was the cheaper choice, not only the prettier one"). The first sentence of the next should show the relationship ("Cost was the argument the council needed; what the town learned from the work is the argument it should remember").
You also decide where the thesis goes. You can state it first and then justify it, or lead readers through the reasoning and arrive at it (Topic 1.5 explains why a skeptical audience may call for the second). Either way, the commentary is what makes the reasoning visible. When you bring in someone else's words or data, introduce them with commentary that says why they matter to your point, as Topic 3.4 shows, so the source joins your reasoning instead of interrupting it.
Worked examples
A student arguing that towns should repair old public buildings rather than replace them has this evidence: last year Carver Falls restored the twelve original wooden windows of its 1924 library for $38,000 instead of replacing them with vinyl for $22,000. The restorer estimated the rebuilt windows would last sixty years; vinyl windows typically last twenty to thirty. Write the evidence two ways, as comparison and as cause-effect, and say which claim each would serve.
Show solution
As comparison (for the claim "repair costs less than replacement over time"):
Carver Falls had two bids for its library windows. Vinyl replacements would cost $22,000 and need replacing again in twenty to thirty years; restoring the original wood would cost $38,000 and, by the restorer's estimate, last sixty. Over sixty years, the town would buy vinyl windows two or three times, at least $44,000 even at today's prices, against one restoration at $38,000. The vinyl bid stays cheaper only until its first replacement, twenty to thirty years in.
As cause-effect (for the claim "one repair teaches a town to repair"):
Restoring the library's windows did more than save them. Because the work was done in place, over a summer, residents walked past a carpenter rebuilding sashes on the front steps, and the council heard for the first time that old work could be fixed rather than replaced. The next spring, when the bandstand's railings rotted, the first bid the council requested was for repair.
Why each works. The comparison treats both options on the same two points (price and lifespan) and its commentary does the arithmetic the claim depends on, ending on the sentence that states the significance. The cause-effect version shows the mechanism (people saw the repair happen), so the link from the windows to the bandstand is explained, not just asserted. It also claims modestly: the council requested a repair bid, not that the whole town changed its mind. Neither version would serve the other's claim, which is why the method has to follow the claim.
A student drafted the paragraph below, then checked the city's records and wrote these notes: the lanes were finished at the end of April; Ash Street had nine crashes involving cyclists in the twelve months before the lanes and two in the eight months from May through December; in most of the nine, a driver passing a cyclist misjudged the gap; and the city's bike counts on Ash Street were about the same before and after the lanes. Revise the paragraph so its reasoning holds, using only what she has.
After the city painted bike lanes on Ash Street in April, crashes involving cyclists dropped from nine to two by the end of the year. This proves bike lanes stop accidents. If the city paints lanes on every street, crashes will disappear and soon most people will stop driving.
Show solution
What's wrong. "Proves" claims more than one street and one year can show; the paragraph offers no mechanism; it ignores other possible causes (did traffic or ridership change?); and the last sentence adds a chain (lanes everywhere, then no crashes, then no driving) with no support for any link. The numbers mislead too: "nine to two" sets a full year before the lanes against the eight months after them, so part of the drop comes from counting over a shorter window.
Revision.
In the twelve months before the city painted bike lanes on Ash Street, nine crashes there involved cyclists, and in most of them a driver passing a cyclist misjudged the gap. The lanes, finished at the end of April, give cyclists a space of their own, so a passing driver no longer has to judge that gap. In the eight months that followed, the street recorded two such crashes: about one every four months, against about three every four months the year before. The city's own counts show about as many cyclists using the street as before, so the drop is not simply fewer riders. One street over eight months is not enough to promise the same result everywhere, but it is a reason to check whether other streets show the same kind of passing crash, and to try lanes where they do.
Why it works. The mechanism is explicit (crashes came from passing too close; lanes separate the two). One rival cause, fewer cyclists, is named and answered with evidence. The numbers are compared as rates over equal spans (per four months), since the draft's "nine to two" set twelve months against eight; the honest drop is from about three crashes to about one in each four-month span, not from nine to two. The claim is scaled to the evidence: it asks the city to look for the same pattern elsewhere and test lanes there, not to paint every street. Every fact in the revision comes from the draft or the notes. Without the bike counts, the honest move would be to say the drop may reflect the lanes; without the crash reports, the mechanism would have to be offered as a likely explanation, not a finding.
The passage below is a draft.
(1) Once a month, the Delmar Repair Café fills the basement of the Third Street church with broken things. (2) Volunteers with tools and patience sit at long tables, and residents bring lamps, toasters, jeans, and bicycles. (3) Last March a retired machinist spent an hour with a boy and a radio that had belonged to the boy's grandfather. (4) He did not fix it for the boy. (5) He handed over the screwdriver and explained each step, and by the end the boy had found the broken wire himself. (6) The café's records show that 70 percent of the items brought in leave working. (7) Each repair keeps an object out of the landfill. (8) More than that, it keeps a skill in the town.
Question 1. The writer wants to add a sentence after sentence 5 that connects the anecdote in sentences 3 to 5 to the claim in sentence 8. Which choice best accomplishes this goal?
- (A) The radio had been made in 1958 and still had its original case.
- (B) A repair café works less like a service than like an apprenticeship: what leaves the basement is often a person who can do the next repair alone.
- (C) Many people enjoy spending time with older relatives.
- (D) The machinist had worked at a factory for thirty-one years.
Question 2. The writer is considering adding the following sentence after sentence 6.
Since the café opened, the town has seen fewer items set out on the curb for bulk trash pickup, which proves the café has changed how residents treat their belongings.
Should the writer add this sentence?
- (A) Yes, because it provides a statistic that supports sentence 6.
- (B) Yes, because it extends the paragraph's reasoning to the whole town.
- (C) No, because it claims the café caused a change without ruling out other explanations for fewer curbside items.
- (D) No, because it repeats the information in sentence 7.
Question 3. Which choice best describes the role of sentences 3 to 5 in the paragraph's line of reasoning?
- (A) They provide a narrative example that the paragraph's final claim depends on.
- (B) They introduce a counterargument to the paragraph's main claim.
- (C) They define the term "repair café."
- (D) They describe the location where the café meets.
Show solution
1. (B). Sentence 8 claims repair keeps "a skill in the town." The anecdote shows a boy learning to do the repair himself, but nothing yet says what the story shows. Choice B is the reflection: it names the significance (an apprenticeship, a person able to do the next repair) and points straight to sentence 8. (A) and (D) add details about the story that don't explain it; (D) tempts because it builds the machinist's credibility, but credibility isn't the missing link. (C) moves away from the paragraph's subject.
2. (C). The sentence moves from sequence ("since the café opened") to cause ("proves the café has changed"), with no mechanism and no attention to other reasons curbside trash might fall (a new pickup fee, a change in the schedule). (A) is tempting, but the sentence contains no statistic, and its claim goes well beyond sentence 6. (B) names the very overreach that makes it a bad addition.
3. (A). Sentences 3 to 5 are narration, and sentence 8's claim about keeping a skill in town rests on them: without the boy finding the wire himself, nothing in the paragraph shows a skill being passed on. Sentences 6 and 7 are about objects (how many get fixed, and what fixing them keeps out of the landfill), so they support the landfill point but show nothing about skill.
Prompt: Some people argue that there is little reason to learn skills that machines now perform for us. Write an argument about the value of learning such skills. Write one body paragraph that develops a claim through narration and reflection.
Show solution
Model paragraph.
Learning a skill a machine performs is how you keep the judgment the machine was hiding from you. Last summer my family's car lost its phone signal on a gravel road in the hills west of Orrin Gap, and the navigation screen froze on a blue dot in a gray field. My father had a paper map in the glove box, which none of us had opened in years, and at first it was useless to us: we could see the roads but couldn't tell which one we were on. It was my younger sister who noticed that the creek on our left was on the map, flowing north, and that only one road ran beside a north-flowing creek. That was the moment I understood what the navigation app had been doing for us all along. It had not only been choosing our turns; it had been noticing creeks, slopes, and road numbers so that we didn't have to, and after years of trusting it, we had lost the habit of looking. A person who can read a map is not someone who will never use an app. She is someone who can still find her way on the day the app goes blank, and who can tell, on every other day, when it has led her wrong.
Why it earns credit. The opening sentence is a debatable claim that the story will prove. The narrative is compact and every detail does work: the frozen blue dot shows the dependence, the unread map shows the lost skill, and the creek shows what the skill actually consists of (noticing the land). The reflection is marked by a shift ("That was the moment I understood"), and it does the reasoning: it explains what the app was doing invisibly and what using it cost. The final two sentences connect the story back to the claim and widen it beyond one family on one road without pretending one story proves a rule. A paragraph that told the same story and ended "and that is why skills are important" would have a narrative and almost no commentary, and it would score low on the evidence-and-commentary row.
Where students lose points
On the exam
The argument essay rewards a line of reasoning developed with specific evidence and commentary, and methods of development are how you produce one in forty minutes: narration from your own experience, cause-effect from what you know about how things work, comparison between options. The synthesis essay asks the same of source material. In the multiple-choice section, revision questions on drafts ask which sentence best connects an example to a claim, whether to add a sentence (such as one that overclaims a cause, as in Question 2 above), and what role a group of sentences plays. Answer them by naming the job the paragraph is missing and finding the choice that does it.
Check yourself
Question 1
A student's body paragraph will defend this claim: "A four-day school week would shift a day of childcare onto parents who work five days." Which method of development is best suited to proving it?
- A
Definition, explaining what a school week is
- B
Description of a school building on the empty fifth day
- C
Cause-effect, explaining how the schedule change produces the childcare burden and for whom
- D
Narration of the student's favorite day of school
Show answer
C
The claim asserts that one thing leads to another, so it needs cause-effect, ideally with the mechanism stated (younger children can't stay home alone; most jobs run five days). Description (B) could make the empty day vivid, but it can't show who bears the cost or why.
- A
Question 2
A paragraph tells how the writer's grandmother, who never finished high school, taught herself bookkeeping from library books so she could keep the accounts for the family's feed store. The paragraph's claim is that public libraries are a community's second school. Which sentence would best serve as the reflection that ends the paragraph?
- A
My grandmother kept those accounts for twenty-two years.
- B
The library she used was built in 1931 with money raised by a bake sale.
- C
No classroom was open to a woman of forty with a store to run, but the library was, and it taught her what the school she left never had the chance to.
- D
Bookkeeping is an important skill for anyone who runs a business.
Show answer
C
Choice C names what the story shows and ties it to the claim: the library did a school's work for someone schools had closed to. Choice A adds a detail that strengthens the story but doesn't explain it, and Choice D generalizes about bookkeeping instead of about libraries.
- A
Question 3
A student writes: "Our school started a peer tutoring program in September, and by December the number of students on academic probation had fallen by a third, which proves tutoring caused the drop." The student knows that the school also changed its probation rules in October. Rewrite the sentence so its claim matches the evidence.
Show answer
One acceptable version: "Between September and December, as the new peer tutoring program got under way, the number of students on academic probation fell by a third, though October's change to the probation rules may account for part of that drop."
Two changes happened at once, so the evidence shows a coincidence in time, not a proven cause. A sound revision replaces "proves" with wording the evidence supports and acknowledges the rival cause the writer already knows about.
Question 4
A paragraph arguing for a new turf field says: "Turf costs $900,000 to install, but it never needs mowing or watering. A grass field, meanwhile, gets muddy in March and has to be reseeded." What is the main problem with this comparison?
- A
It uses numbers, which weakens an argument about sports.
- B
It gives only the cost of turf and only the drawbacks of grass, so the two options are never compared on the same points.
- C
It should have been developed through narration instead.
- D
It compares two subjects that have nothing in common.
Show answer
B
A comparison proves something only when both subjects are measured on the same points: cost against cost, upkeep against upkeep, playing days against playing days. Here turf gets its benefits and grass gets its drawbacks, which reads as cherry-picking. Choice D is wrong because the two fields share an obvious purpose; the problem is how they are compared, not whether they can be.
- A