Argument & Evidence Basics

Argument Structure — Claims, Reasons, Evidence, Counterarguments & Rebuttals

How an author builds a complete argument — claim, reason, evidence, counterargument, rebuttal, qualification, conclusion — and how to evaluate whether the evidence actually earns the claim it's supporting.

Comparison, Contrast & Concession in Advanced English

How to read although, even though, while, whereas, despite, unlike, rather than, and in contrast precisely — telling a simple comparison apart from a sharp contrast, and from a concession an author makes to strengthen their own argument.

Modality, Stance & Author Position in Extended Texts

How to read exactly how certain an author is about each claim — separating a proposition from the author's degree of commitment to it, tracking attribution across a passage, and reconstructing a qualified final position from a paragraph's hedges.

Cause, Evidence, Explanation & Alternative Explanations

How to read a causal claim critically — separating what happened first from what actually caused what, naming the mechanism behind a cause, spotting confounding variables, and weighing alternative explanations a text may be quietly passing over.

Evidence, Claims, Data & Interpretation

How to separate data from observation, observation from interpretation, and interpretation from inference — so you can judge whether a study's evidence actually matches its claim, its sample supports its scope, and its conclusion is genuinely earned.

Critical Reading — Assumptions, Hidden Premises & Logical Gaps

How to find the unstated idea an argument secretly depends on — the hidden premise bridging evidence and conclusion — and how to test whether that bridge can actually carry the weight the author is putting on it.

Counterfactual Thinking, Causal Reasoning & 'What Would Happen If…?'

How to test a causal claim by imagining the world where the supposed cause never happened — the counterfactual baseline, control groups, regression to the mean, and reading a causal mechanism alongside the counterfactual question that tests it.

Argument Evaluation & Logical Fallacies

How to judge an argument's overall strength — relevance, sufficiency, and reliability of its evidence — and how to recognise eighteen recurring reasoning errors, from hasty generalization to moving the goalposts, without turning every reading into a fallacy hunt.

Rhetorical Structure, Author Purpose & Persuasive Language

Why an author chose to say it this particular way — purpose, framing, loaded language, and the persuasive structures (problem-solution, concession-rebuttal, rhetorical contrast) beneath an argument's surface reasoning.

Tone, Attitude, Bias & Objectivity in English Reading

How to detect an author's attitude toward their subject from word choice, evidence selection, and framing — separating tone from certainty, tone from evidence, and genuine bias from ordinary, honest opinion.