Words for evidence
Eight terms. Match each to what it actually describes.
Should organisations move to a four-day week?
Four texts on the same question, all composed for this lesson. The trials and figures in them are illustrative.
A · An opening case
The argument for a four-day week rests on three claims. The first is that output does not fall — trials have generally reported flat or slightly improved productivity. The second is that recruitment and retention improve, which is a real cost saving and an easy one to measure. The third is that the working week has been shortened before, repeatedly, and each time the same objections were made.
What the case does not rest on is the idea that people work harder in four days. They do not. What changes is what gets cut, and most of what gets cut is meetings.
B · A rebuttal
It is not the productivity claim that is weak — it is the sample. Almost every trial has been run by organisations that volunteered, which means we are measuring workplaces confident enough to try it. That is not nothing, but it is not a general finding either.
What has not been tested is the case that worries people: a hospital ward, a warehouse, a school. It is in exactly those settings that the hours cannot be compressed, because the work is the hours. Cutting meetings does not help you if you do not have any.
C · A column
I am in favour, and I want to be precise about what I am in favour of, because the argument is usually had at the wrong level.
What I am not claiming is that a four-day week suits every workplace. It plainly does not. What I am claiming is narrower: that in the kind of work where output is not measured in hours, the five-day week is a convention rather than a requirement, and conventions should be defended rather than assumed. So far the defence has consisted of pointing out that it has always been five.
D · From a comment thread
This is absolutely ridiculous. Obviously people will just do less work, it is really that simple. I have honestly never seen anything so completely out of touch. It is very clear that whoever wrote this has definitely never actually run a business.
Seven statements. Decide which text each is true of. A text may be the answer more than once.
A The opening case
B The rebuttal
C The column
D The comment
1. Concedes that the disputed claim is not the weak point.
2. States what the argument does not rest on, in order to narrow it.
3. Uses seven intensifiers and no evidence.
4. Names the settings where the argument is least likely to hold.
5. Narrows its own claim explicitly before defending it.
6. Points out that the opposing position consists of an appeal to custom.
7. Attacks the person rather than the claim.
Count the clefts. Text A has two, text B has two, text C has two. Text D has none and seven intensifiers, and it is the only one of the four that does not identify what it disagrees with.
That is not a coincidence. Locating a disagreement and building a cleft are the same operation.
What each cleft was doing
Six clefts from the four texts
| Sentence | Job |
|---|---|
| What the case does not rest on is… | Removes a claim the reader might have assumed was being made |
| What changes is what gets cut. | Replaces the expected answer with the real one |
| It is not the productivity claim that is weak — it is the sample. | Concedes one thing and locates the objection precisely |
| What has not been tested is… | Names a gap in the evidence and gives it the end position |
| It is in exactly those settings that… | Emphasises a place rather than a thing |
| What I am claiming is narrower: that… | Redefines the writer’s own position before defending it |
Say it, don’t read it. A cleft has its own prosody, and it is what makes the construction audible in speech.
The focused element takes the main stress and the rest of the sentence falls away: it is the TIMING that is the problem. In a wh-cleft the build-up is level and the delivery falls: what has not been explained ⟋ is why SEPTEMBER was chosen ⟍.
Said flat, a cleft sounds like an unnecessarily long sentence. The stress is not decoration; it is half the construction.
Four sentences have been removed from a fifth text. Put each one back where it belongs.
Both sides of this argument have been using the same word to mean two different things. [1]
One side means output per hour worked. The other means total output. [2] A four-day week can raise the first and lower the second at the same time, and both sides can then report a victory from the same data.
[3] It is the ambiguity that has kept the argument going, not the evidence, which is thinner and less contested than either side admits.
What would settle it is a trial in a setting where the hours are the work. [4] Until somebody runs one, both sides are arguing about offices and pretending to argue about work.
Locating the disagreement
Seven gaps. Choose the construction the argument needs.
It is not the productivity claim is weak — the sample. Almost every trial has been run by volunteers, means we are measuring confident workplaces. has not been tested is the case that worries people. in exactly those settings that the hours cannot be compressed. would settle it is a trial in a hospital or a warehouse, and no such trial has been published.
Seven sentences. One error each.
1. It is the sample what is weak.
2. What has not been tested are the hard cases.
3. Is the timing that matters, not the cost.
4. It is in those settings where the hours cannot be compressed.
5. This is absolutely completely ridiculous and obviously wrong. — an argument, not a comment thread
6. What I am claiming is that is narrower.
7. It was them who ran the trial. — in writing
Rewrite the comment
Task card · Pairs · 12 minutes · Writing then speaking
Take text D — the comment — and rewrite it as an argument somebody would have to answer.
Six minutes rewriting, six comparing with the pair beside you.
- Delete every intensifier first. Read what is left. It will be very short.
- Work out what the commenter actually believes, and state it as one claim.
- Locate the disagreement with a cleft: it is not X that…, it is Y.
- Add one piece of evidence they would need to have, and say plainly that they have not given it.
What you will find. Once the intensifiers are gone there is roughly one claim left, and it is a real one: that people will do less work. It is arguable, it is testable, and the original said it in a way that nobody could answer — which is a loss for the commenter more than for anybody else.
What was left
Two questions.
1. How much survived the deletion of the intensifiers?
2. What did the intensifiers cost the commenter?
Locating is the same as clefting
Two questions. Twenty seconds.
1. What links refutation and the cleft?
2. What does a cleft need in speech?
Next. The two constructions in full — how they are built, what goes wrong, and the three things only one of them can do.