B.5.RA:4.4a.1 - Recover the question and the claims before drawing links

Read enough of the surrounding text or exchange to identify the question being answered and what the speaker asks the recipient to accept. A recommendation, an assertion about what happened, and an explanation of an accepted event can occur in the same paragraph. Ask of each passage: is this a reason to accept a disputed claim, an account of why an accepted event happened, a question, a request, or background? The word “because” fits both argument and explanation. Their difference here is the work done in the exchange; an explanation can itself contain claims that need argument when challenged.

Write the potentially relevant claims as complete sentences, with enough of their source wording or location to check the interpretation. Resolve “it”, “they”, the occasion and the comparison class where the context permits. Preserve negation, quantities, time, modality and attribution: “Lee says the room may be available” neither asserts certain availability nor independently establishes it. Split a sentence when it contains claims that can be accepted or challenged separately. Do not cut a logical relation into newly asserted facts. “If P, then Q” states a conditional; it asserts neither P nor Q. To use it to reach Q, recover a separate ground for P and preserve whatever qualifications the conditional has.

Clarify only as far as the next use requires. Replacing “works well” with a measured criterion can make a claim testable, but an invented threshold is your proposal until the speaker or source supports that reading. Rhetorical questions can convey commitments, and imperatives can express recommendations. Recover the proposed commitment from context instead of treating every question mark as disposable filler. A literal command alone does not state its justification.

If the conclusion is unstated, propose the claim the offered reasons appear intended to establish. For example, a successful rehearsal with unchanged equipment may support another successful display; it does not by itself establish that another test is unnecessary or that this is the best venue. Keep a reconstructed conclusion distinct from a conclusion you decide to argue for yourself.