Delineate a speaker's argument and specific claims, and evaluate the soundness of the reasoning and the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence

Learning goal: Delineate a speaker's argument and specific claims, separating the overall position from the claims that support it and the evidence offered for each, and evaluate the soundness of the reasoning and the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence. By the end you can listen to a short persuasive speech, map it, and say for each claim whether the evidence bears on it, whether there is enough of it, and whether the conclusion actually follows.

Original speech transcript — Bike-to-School Week at Birch Lane. The school, the speaker and every number are invented. Read aloud by a partner at a natural pace while listeners take notes without the text; then use the text to check.

"Good morning. My name is Jonah Reyes, and I am asking the student council to approve a Bike-to-School Week in May. I have five reasons.

"First, most of us live close enough to bike. I asked the front office for the number of students who live within two miles of school. Out of 340 students, 210 do. That is more than six in ten.

"Second, biking is good for learning. My cousin bikes to her school every day and she gets straight A's. If we biked, our grades would go up too.

"Third, biking would cut car traffic in the drop-off loop in half. On a Tuesday in March I counted 96 cars coming through the loop between 7:30 and 7:50. If just 40 students biked, that traffic would be cut in half.

"Fourth, it is safe. Nobody has ever been hurt biking to Birch Lane. And students want this: I asked the 24 members of the running club, and 20 said they would bike during the week.

"Finally, the cost is small. A rack that holds ten bikes costs about 600 dollars, and four racks would cover 40 bikes. The president of the Parent Association told me on Friday that the association would pay for the racks.

"A Bike-to-School Week would be popular, healthy and cheap. Please approve it. Thank you."

Delineating the argument. To delineate is to draw the outline: the argument is the speaker's overall position and the structure that supports it, and the specific claims are the separate statements that structure is made of. Jonah's position is that the council should approve a Bike-to-School Week. His specific claims are five: most students live close enough; biking improves learning; biking would halve loop traffic; biking is safe and wanted; the cost is small and covered. Under each claim sits evidence: an office count, a cousin, a car count, an absence of injuries, a club poll, a price and a conversation. A delineation lists each claim with its evidence beneath it and nothing else, so that evaluation can happen claim by claim rather than as a reaction to the whole speech. Speakers signal their structure with words like first, second and finally; use those signals, but check that each numbered reason really is one claim and not two, as the fourth is.

Three tests for the evidence and reasoning. Relevance asks whether the evidence bears on the claim at all. Sufficiency asks whether there is enough of it, and of the right kind, to establish the claim. Soundness asks whether the reasoning from evidence to claim holds: does the conclusion follow, or has the speaker slipped from one thing to another? A claim can pass one test and fail another, which is why all three are applied every time.

Claim one, distance. The office count of 210 of 340 students within two miles is relevant: distance bears directly on whether biking is possible. It is reasonably sufficient for the modest claim that most students live close enough, and the arithmetic is right, since 210 divided by 340 is about 0.62, more than six in ten. The reasoning is sound as far as it goes, though living within two miles does not mean owning a bike or being allowed to ride one; the claim is about closeness, and the evidence supports closeness.

Claim two, learning. The cousin is weakly relevant at most: one student at another school says little about Birch Lane students' grades. It is insufficient, since it is one case, and the reasoning is unsound: the speaker assumes that because a student who bikes has high grades, biking causes high grades. Many things about the cousin could explain her grades. This claim barely passes the relevance test and fails the other two.

Claim three, traffic. The count of 96 cars is relevant and it is real observation, though one Tuesday is thin. The reasoning is unsound. If 40 students biked, at most 40 cars would be removed, and fewer if some cars carry two students. 96 minus 40 is 56, which is not half of 96; half would be 48. The conclusion does not follow from the numbers the speaker himself gave.

Claim four, safety and support. "Nobody has ever been hurt" is an absence of reports, which is weakly relevant and insufficient: the speech gives no source and no count of how many students bike now, so the absence of reports may reflect little biking, and it says nothing about what happens when 40 do. The running-club poll is relevant to whether students want the week, but 24 athletes are not a representative sample of 340 students, so it is insufficient for the claim that "students want this."

Claim five, cost. The rack price is relevant and specific: 4 racks at 600 dollars is 2,400 dollars, which the speaker could have stated. The promise of payment is relevant and would be sufficient if confirmed, but it is a reported conversation, not a written commitment. The reasoning is sound with conditions: the council should verify the promise before relying on it, judge for itself whether 2,400 dollars is small, and ask whether racks are the only cost.

The misconception. Students often evaluate a speech by how confident and organized it sounds. Jonah's speech is both, yet its grade claim barely passes one test and fails the other two, and most of its other claims fail at least one. Confidence is a delivery quality, not an evidence quality. The opposite error is to reject the whole argument because part of it is weak: the distance and cost claims stand on their own, and a council could approve the week on those grounds while asking the speaker to drop the grade claim and recompute the traffic figure. Evaluating claim by claim lets you say exactly that.

A worked model in prose. Take claim three alone. Delineate: claim, loop traffic would be cut in half; evidence, 96 cars counted one Tuesday; reasoning, 40 bikers means half the cars. Relevance: yes, cars in the loop are what the claim is about. Sufficiency: partial, one morning is a small sample, though it is a real count. Soundness: no, because 96 minus 40 is 56, not 48, and the subtraction assumes each biker removes a whole car. Revised claim the evidence would support: if 40 students who now arrive by car biked instead, the loop would carry up to 40 fewer cars, roughly two fifths fewer, not half. That revision is what a fair evaluator offers: not "the speaker is wrong," but "here is what the evidence actually establishes."

Worked example 1 — delineating the whole speech. Position: approve a Bike-to-School Week. Claim 1: most students live close enough; evidence: 210 of 340 within two miles. Claim 2: biking improves learning; evidence: cousin with straight A's. Claim 3: traffic would halve; evidence: 96 cars counted, 40 possible bikers. Claim 4a: biking is safe; evidence: no reported injuries. Claim 4b: students want the week; evidence: 20 of 24 running-club members. Claim 5: cost is small and covered; evidence: 600 dollars per ten-bike rack, a spoken promise from the Parent Association. Notice that the speaker's "fourth reason" contained two claims with two different pieces of evidence; delineating separates them so each can be judged.

Worked example 2 — evaluating claim two in full. Relevance: the cousin attends a different school and is one person; her grades tell us almost nothing about Birch Lane students. Weakly relevant at most. Sufficiency: even if it were relevant, one case cannot establish a general claim. Insufficient. Soundness: the reasoning moves from "a student who bikes has high grades" to "biking raises grades," treating a coincidence as a cause with no comparison to students who do not bike. Unsound. Verdict: the claim should be dropped from the argument, and the speaker should be told why in those three terms.

Worked example 3 — evaluating claim five with a condition. Relevance: a price per rack and a source of payment bear directly on cost. Relevant. Sufficiency: the price is specific; four racks at 600 dollars each is 2,400 dollars, and the speaker should say so. The payment promise is a reported conversation, so it is sufficient only if confirmed in writing. Partly sufficient. Soundness: "covered" follows from the evidence if the promise holds; "small" is a judgment the council must still make, and racks may not be the only cost. Sound with conditions. Verdict: accept the claim provisionally and ask for the association's written confirmation before the council votes.

Argument map: Listen to the speech once without the text and write the position and as many claims as you catch. Listen a second time and add the evidence beneath each claim. Then use the transcript to check your map and mark anything you missed. Finally add three columns, relevant, sufficient and sound, and fill each with yes, no or partly and a phrase giving the reason. A strong map has all six claims (counting the fourth reason as two), evidence under each, and a reason in every cell, not just a verdict.

Independent performance: Listen to a live or recorded persuasive speech of two to four minutes on a school or community issue, delivered by a classmate or teacher from an original script. Delineate the speaker's argument and specific claims in a written map, then write a one-page evaluation that treats each claim separately, applies the relevance, sufficiency and soundness tests, and ends by stating which claims the argument could keep and which it should drop or revise. Success criteria: the position and every claim are stated in your own words; every piece of evidence is placed under the claim it supports; every verdict names the test it applies and gives a reason; at least one claim is revised to what its evidence actually supports rather than simply rejected.