Scholastic Assessment Test Vocabulary: Argument

Harbor Light's evening script kept a three-minute slot at the bottom for a rebuttal from the ferry captain after the mayor's interview. What belongs in that slot?

The captain's answer to the mayor's account of the late boats, given before the broadcast ends.

Ms. Okonkwo wrote one line on the board before the mock trial began: every student who missed the bus had already been marked tardy. She called that line the premise. Which job does that line do for the case about to be built?

It is the starting claim the detention argument will stand on. If the attendance rule fails, the later questions about who deserves a penalty lose their footing.

Dr. Leena Voss told the town hearing she supported the reservoir, then added a caveat: the fish ladder had to be finished before any June drawdown. How does the fish-ladder sentence bound her support for the reservoir?

Her yes stays tied to a condition. She will back the reservoir when the ladder is ready in time for the fish.

With four minutes left at the Easton invitational, Coach Ibarra leaned toward Jonah Pike and told him to grant the bus-fare point. What should Jonah do with that point?

He should let the other side have that point in public and spend what time remains on the rest of the case. The fare clash is given over so the larger argument can continue.

On the seminar whiteboard, Professor Okoye circled the sentence about night classes raising graduation rates and labeled it our contention. What role does the circled sentence play in the seminar?

It is the claim this meeting has gathered to test against the articles on the table.

At the fact-check desk, Willa Brandt had forty minutes to refute a senator's claim that Ridley County lost 4,000 jobs last year. The state spreadsheet beside her listed 900. What would a successful use of that spreadsheet accomplish?

It would show the 4,000 figure fails. Brandt's job is finished when the senator's job-loss statement cannot stand against the state's 900.

In the Monday lab meeting, Dr. Voss asked the north bench to adduce a second count of the colonies before anyone emailed the journal the figure 86. What is she asking the north bench to supply?

Evidence brought forward for that 86, separate from the south bench's original tray. She wants a count the journal can be shown.

The clinic poster said Tuesday walk-in hours cut waits in half. Before Thursday's budget vote, the board chair told Director Farah Qureshi to substantiate that. What does the chair expect her to bring?

Records that back the half-time claim, such as last month's sign-in sheets set beside this month's.

Judge Havel stopped the mock appellate round and told the defense table, "I have heard the state's case. Give me your counterargument on the 11 p.m. timestamp." What is she asking the defense to give her?

Their own reasoning against reading that timestamp as proof of guilt.

At the science fair, Mateo Ruiz called his guess a hypothesis: seedlings under the red lamp would grow taller than the 30 under the blue lamp. Before the trays are measured, what kind of statement has he made?

A proposed result he can check with the lamps and a ruler. The trays are there so the red-lamp guess can be measured against those 30 seedlings.

Holding two 1912 mill ledgers, the historian said her inference was that the night shift had been paid in scrip. Drawing the pay method from those books is what sort of step?

A conclusion the entries point toward, even though no single line announces it. She is willing to say what the pay columns suggest about scrip.

Mayor Ellison Cho never said the library would close. He said the city could fund either Sunday hours or the roof, and a resident asked about the implication. What unspoken consequence is the resident pressing him to face?

That one of the two, Sunday hours or the roof, would be dropped. She wants the consequence hanging inside his either-or.

In room 214, Mr. Adelayo stopped the essay where it said transfer students miss the tutoring signup because they skip orientation. He asked the class to name the assumption under that sentence. What hidden belief is he asking them to name?

That orientation is the path to the tutoring list, treated as settled before any signup sheet is examined. The essay leans on that link from the first clause.

Ms. Ruiz wrote "fallacy" in the margin of a paragraph claiming the cafeteria pizza must be nutritious because it is popular. What is the margin note accusing that paragraph of?

A break in the reasoning, where popularity at lunch is asked to prove something about nutrition.

Nia Broussard opened her paper with a thesis: the 1974 bus strike succeeded because the churches fed the strikers from their own kitchens. What is that sentence doing in the opening?

It states the paper's main claim, the one the church ledgers and strike minutes on the later pages have to earn.

Professor Harriet Dunn set a proposal to ban private cars opposite a proposal to protect them as a right, and she called the second the antithesis. What does that second sentence contribute beside the ban?

It supplies the opposing claim at full size, so the seminar can examine the clash. The right-to-drive sentence stands as the rival position.

After the student-senate vote, Dean Paloma West said the winning side's rhetoric had carried the room of 62. What is she crediting with those votes?

The speakers' craft with words, order, and emphasis. She is pointing at how the case was spoken, the part that moved the 62.

Dr. Yao Chen's four-page brief struck the funding panel as cogent, and they slid it onto the final pile of six. What quality earned the brief that place?

Reasoning that stayed clear, with evidence locked to the claim, so a reader could follow it straight through.

Reviewer Noor El-Sayed wrote that the link between the new bell schedule and the 3-point grade dip was tenuous. In her note, how strong is that tie?

Thin. The schedule and the dip sit near each other, and she finds the connection too slight to lean on.

In the ethics committee, Dr. Soren Hale called the company's safety chart specious. The bars looked calm and left out 14 unreported spills. What is he warning the committee about that chart?

It wears the look of a solid safety record while the spills stay off the bars. The neat picture invites a trust it has not earned.

Three readers at the journal club marked Priya Nandakumar's soil theory plausible and asked for one more season of plots. What degree of acceptance are they giving the theory?

They are willing to treat it as a live possibility on the plots shown so far. Another season would be for testing, and the current marks already allow that the theory could hold.

Ellis Ward told the other jurors the night clerk became credible when she described the torn 20-dollar bill she had refused at 1:10 a.m. What did that detail do for the clerk, in his view?

It made her account believable. The odd bill fits a real moment, the sort of detail he expects from someone who was at the register.

A caller had invented the 40-foot figure in a group chat. Editor Marisol Trent marked the stadium-sinkhole tip spurious and kept it off page one. What does that mark say about the tip?

She is treating the tip as a fake. The made-up hole stays off the front of the paper.

Coach Ibarra slid a one-page printout back across the equipment table. A single parent blamed the new cleats for one sprained ankle, and Ibarra called the report anecdotal. Why does she push that page back?

She sees one person's story where a cleat decision would need a count of sprains across the roster. The page holds a single ankle.

Where the application form asked if the reading study was empirical, Dr. Ingrid Solberg checked yes and clipped on timed tests from 120 third graders. What standard did that yes commit the study to?

Claims grounded in observation and measurement. Those 120 timed tests are the ground the reading results have to stand on.

Halfway through the faculty meeting, the chair asked whether the room had consensus on moving finals to the 18th. When can she fairly announce that the faculty has agreed on that date?

When the room shares a yes wide enough that the 18th can stand as the group's decision.

After the curriculum committee voted 8 to 3 to drop the oral exam, Professor Naomi Berg stayed behind with a two-page dissent. The chair stamped it into the same packet as the vote. What is that filing putting into the packet?

Her reasons for voting no, kept beside the majority result. The oral exam still goes, and her disagreement stays on the record with the 8-to-3 count.

Councilor Bea Lind raised an objection the moment the zoning map placed a loading dock beside the nursery school on Pine Street. What is she putting in the way of that map?

A stated reason to resist the dock: it would sit beside the school.

Dean West said she would back the honor-code change, then read a qualification limiting it to exams worth at least 20 percent of the grade. Which exams remain inside the change she will back?

Those worth 20 percent or more. Smaller quizzes sit outside the version of the rule she is willing to support.

Both tables in the mock trial accepted a stipulation that the blue sedan had been parked at 410 Cedar since 6:40 p.m. Which fact did they just remove from the argument?

The car's location. Both sides now accept that it sat at 410 Cedar from 6:40 onward, so the trial can argue about what that parking means.

Before calculating the cart's speed, the physics lecturer told the class to postulate a track with zero friction. For this problem, what should the class do about friction?

Treat friction as zero and figure the speed on the track this problem imagines.

Professor Idris Bello opened the logic unit by writing an axiom on the board: a statement cannot be both wholly true and wholly false at once. What standing does he want the class to give that line?

A starting truth of the system, already in place so later proofs have ground under them.

Dr. Rafael Mendes finished a proof about even numbers and said a corollary followed: the square of an even number is even as well. Once that proof is finished, where does the claim about squares come from?

It rides along with the result they just accepted. The squares inherit their evenness from the proof about even numbers.

On the overhead, the logic coach projected a deduction: if every member of the 12-person club paid dues and Samir is a member, then Samir paid dues. The move from the whole club to Samir illustrates what pattern?

Reasoning from a general rule down to one person who fits it. Membership plus the club-wide dues rule produces Samir's payment.

A methods poster walked the class through an induction. It moved from 40 clean wells out of 42 sampled to the claim that the town's wells were safe. What is that last step doing with the samples?

Building a town-wide claim from the wells that were actually tested. The 40 clean results are asked to speak for wells nobody sampled.

A household jar of cash behind the flour showed up in the op-ed as an analogy for the city's rainy-day fund. How is that jar meant to carry the fund argument?

By likeness. A family saving for a broken furnace gives readers a familiar picture of the city's fund.

In the appellate practice room, the lawyer cited a 1998 precedent in which Judge Kell had barred a similar late filing. What use does she make of Kell's order?

She offers it as a guide for the filing still in front of this court.

Mr. Adelayo circled a bare statistic in Lila Cho's draft and wrote that it needs a citation. What is he requiring her to add?

The source of the number, named clearly enough that a reader can find who counted it.

Friday's pool reopening sat in a quote on the night editor's desk, and she said it could not run without an attribution. The quote needs what before it can be printed?

The name of the person who said Friday was the reopening day.

Overtime past 46 hours stayed at the old rate under a proviso attached to the draft's 4 percent raise. Under this draft, that overtime is paid how?

At the old rate. The raise covers the rest of the pay, and hours past 46 stay priced as they were.

A line at the bottom of the hiking club's scholarship handout served as a disclaimer: the tips came from students, and the financial-aid office had not reviewed them. What boundary does that line draw around the tips?

It marks them as student advice, outside the aid office and outside legal counsel. Readers are told how far the handout is willing to stand behind the tips.

Asked whether 200 new desks would arrive before September, the candidate began to equivocate about supply chains and phases. What sort of answer is the moderator getting?

One that dodges a yes and a no, so September never receives a firm commitment.

Half the lab meeting stared at the sodium graph, and Dr. Minh Tran asked the presenter to elucidate the spike in week 6. What is Tran asking for?

A plain account that makes the week-6 jump understandable. The room needs to see what that spike shows.

Professor Yvette Lang set down her notes and said she would posit the opposite: the mural increased turnout at the 9th Street poll. Her mural sentence enters the seminar as what?

A claim placed on the table for examination. She offers the turnout increase so the room can argue it.

At the headline meeting, the city editor approved a headline that would allege double-billing by the contractor, with the invoices still missing from the file. What would allege tell readers about that double-billing?

That the paper is reporting a charge, still short of invoices that would show the billing outright. The contractor meets the headline as the person accused.

On the radio, the columnist said she would recant her March claim that the river path had raised shop sales 30 percent. What will her next column have to do with that figure?

Take it back in public, for the same audience that heard the March claim. The 30 percent would be withdrawn under her own name.

Halfway through the hearing, the township lawyer asked to retract the sentence naming Mr. Okada as the owner of lot 12. If the chair allows it, what happens to that sentence?

It leaves the township's case. The hearing continues without the claim that Okada owns lot 12.

Five hundred rider surveys landed on the press table, sent over to buttress the claim that the late ferry was the city's top complaint. What are those responses supposed to do for the ranking?

Prop it up. Riders naming the late ferry give that top-complaint ranking a sturdier base.

A memo leaked to the Harbor Light showed the traffic study had counted cars only on a holiday Tuesday. Caleb Ng said the memo would undermine the study's call for a new ramp. What does that holiday detail do to the ramp recommendation?

It weakens the recommendation. A count from a holiday is poor footing for a new ramp, and readers who see the memo will trust the study less on that call.

If the incubator had run 4 degrees hot, the rival lab wrote, it could discredit the colony paper. What outcome is the lab promising if that reading holds?

The colony counts would lose the journal's trust. Four degrees of extra heat would make the 86 look like a machine error.

On cross-examination, the student lawyer tried to impugn the inspector who signed the kiln report after a visit of six minutes. The short visit is being used to cast what on the inspector?

Doubt about whether the signature deserves trust. Six minutes in the shop is the lawyer's reason for questioning the inspector's reliability.

Once the booster-club chair announced 220 boxes sold, a parent in row four stood to gainsay her with a tally of 180. What did that tally do to the chair's figure?

Contradicted it. The parent's 180 stands as a direct denial of the announced 220.

After a trustee called the late bus a luxury, a student offered a rejoinder about the 47 riders who live past the highway. The remark answers the trustee by doing what?

Meeting the luxury line with a count. Those 47 riders are her reply to the criticism, aimed straight back at it.

Chapter 4, the book review said, was a polemic against the county fair's livestock rules, complete with nine banned breeds. How does the reviewer characterize the way that chapter is written?

As a forceful written attack on those rules, carrying the breed list with it.

Professor Dunn handed back a paper arguing that the honor code allows copying when the copier attaches a thank-you note, and she wrote sophistry across the top. Her comment treats that argument as what kind of reasoning?

Clever steps that twist the code. The thank-you note is dressed up as a moral permission, and the chain sounds sharper than the rule it bends.

Two editors spent twenty minutes in a quibble over whether a caption should say nearly 300 or about 300. Those twenty minutes over nearly 300 and about 300 are stuck on a point of what importance?

A small one. The wording of the number is the whole fight, while the story's larger claims sit on the desk untouched.

In the philosophy seminar, a student called the club's no-phones-at-meals rule dogma, because questions about it were ruled out of order. The student is saying the rule is being treated as what?

Closed to examination. The club holds the meal rule as settled, with no opening to ask why the phones must stay away.

Printed on the honor-code program was a tenet: a student's name on a paper means the work is the student's own. That line gives the code what?

A principle the school is expected to hold, one the rest of the rules can hang from.

Crossing out "the children are our future," the speech coach told the candidate the line was a platitude. Why is the coach unwilling to let that line stay in the speech?

It is worn smooth and empty of any claim about this year's budget. The room has heard it too often for it to do work.

"Water is important to towns near rivers" was circled by the feature editor, who called the sentence a truism unfit to open the piece. Why is that sentence a poor opening?

Readers already grant it, so the feature has nothing yet to argue. A river town's need for water will not pull anyone into the story.

Fifteen interviews turned, on the slide, into a generalization that students in this district of 2,100 hate group projects. What has happened to those interviews on the way to the slide?

They have been stretched into a claim about every student in the district. Fifteen voices are presented as the whole enrollment.

Mid-briefing, the translator asked the room to preserve a nuance: the mayor had promised to review the fine. What fine distinction is she insisting the briefing keep?

Review leaves the fine in place pending a look. She wants that narrower promise kept intact in the summary of the mayor's words.

Total success or total failure was the dichotomy the moderator refused for the old mill. What framing of the mill is she refusing?

A split into only two boxes. She wants room for a mill that works in some ways and fails in others.

Professor Adelowo called it a paradox that the bakery's higher Saturday prices brought longer lines, and he left both facts on the board. Why does he leave the prices and the lines side by side?

The pairing is strange enough to need an explanation, and the Saturday customer count is still real. He wants the class to unpack higher prices and a longer queue together.

Side by side, the ticket log and the cash log showed a discrepancy the auditor circled in red: 310 seats sold, 286 payments recorded. What do those two numbers amount to, side by side?

A mismatch between records that should agree. One log, or both, fails to describe the same night cleanly.

Ice-cream sales and late swims rose together in July, and the health reporter labeled that pairing a correlation. What link between sales and swims is she stating?

They moved together that month. Her sentence reports the paired rise and stops there.

Dr. Amina Farouk told the journal club the sleep lab could claim causation only if the darker rooms had produced the extra 40 minutes of sleep. What would that claim give the darker rooms credit for?

Producing the extra sleep. The 40 minutes would be named as an effect of the lighting change.

A critic of the sleep study called the new mattresses a confound, because every darker room received one on the same day. Why do those mattresses tangle the lighting result?

Two changes happened together, darkness and new bedding. The extra sleep cannot be lined up with the lamps while the mattresses changed on the same day.

Dr. Esme Calder told the methods class the phone survey carried a bias toward households that still answer unknown numbers, 22 percent of the call list. She says the results are pulled off center by what feature of the calls?

Who picks up. That 22 percent may tilt the picture away from the rest of the town, because the survey hears only from people who answer unknown numbers.

Caleb Ng's diner draft praised the owner's soup, and the ombudsman said objectivity required the three failed temperature checks in the same piece. What obligation does that instruction place on him?

To follow the inspection record in the published piece. The three failed checks stay in the story because they belong to the evidence on the diner.

At the town hearing, Marisol Trent introduced herself as a proponent of the Saturday market and took the first speaking chair. By taking that chair, she is presenting herself as what?

The person arguing for the market, scheduled to make the case in favor before anyone speaks against it.

A detractor of the stadium lights waited through nine speakers, then described Friday glare in 30 bedroom windows on Elm. What has he come to do about the lights?

Argue against them. The 30 windows are the case he brings to the board.

Seventy percent of fifth-period tardies came from the snack line, according to the footnote that gave the rationale for the new late-pass rule. That percentage answers what about the rule?

Why the school wrote it this way. The snack-line share is the reason offered for the new passes.

Ms. Ruiz wrote "no warrant" beside a paragraph on the robotics proposal. The paragraph moved from nine wins in twelve matches straight to a second robot. What is absent between those two steps?

A justification linking the nine wins to the bigger purchase. The match record sits next to the second robot without a reason that shows how one supports the other.

Four hours into bargaining, the mediator said the crux was whether Sunday work would stay voluntary for the 16 night bakers. She says those talks turn on what?

The Sunday question. Wages can wait, because voluntary Sunday work for those 16 bakers decides whether any agreement exists.

On the fact-check card, the ad's purport was a $400 property-tax cut for a yes vote on the bond, carried by the headlines and the photos. What is the ad set up to get across?

That a yes vote brings a $400 tax cut. The hurried reader is meant to leave with that message.

Closing the 3rd Street bridge carried a ramification the council clerk wrote down: nine extra minutes for an ambulance to reach the west-side clinic. The clerk's note records what?

A consequence that follows the closure. The council is being asked to weigh those nine minutes.

Wanting a new pool, the editorial seemed to presuppose a silent majority among the town's 14,000 residents. How does the piece handle the idea that most residents already want the pool?

It treats that majority as already true. The pool argument is built on it, ahead of any vote that would show the 14,000 one way or another.

Kenji Mori's climate-lab supervisor asked him to extrapolate the hillside erosion rate, measured across five rainy seasons, out to 2040. He is being asked to carry that rate forward by what method?

By extending the measured pattern past the five seasons and estimating the hillside in 2040. The later year is a projection from the rate already observed.

On the seminar whiteboard, June Pell wrote a conjecture that the missing band uniforms had been left on bus 12 after the away game. Her note is offered at what level of certainty?

A guess the class can go check. She thinks the uniforms may still be on bus 12, and she is waiting on a way to confirm it.

In the photo meeting, Samir Haddad tapped the bike picture and said he could only surmise, from mud on the left pedal, that the rider had come down Oak. How much proof is under that route?

A thin clue, and he labels it as such. Mud on one pedal is the whole basis for sending the rider down Oak.

The witness started to say that Benicio had heard the manager admit the shortage, and the mock-trial coach cut the sentence off as hearsay. She blocks it because the witness would be depending on what?

Benicio's report of the manager's words. The brief can use what this witness heard directly, and the retelling sits outside that limit.

In courtroom 3, the night clerk's testimony ran twenty minutes and stayed inside what she saw at the register from 1:00 to 1:20 a.m. Those minutes are her chance to provide what?

Her formal account, offered as evidence, of the slice of the night she witnessed.

A speaker spent his two minutes of the transit debate on the mayor's vacation photos. The chair ruled the detour a red herring. Under that ruling, what did the photos do to the fare debate?

They led the room away from the routes and the fare vote. The chair treats the photos as a distraction from the item on the agenda.

Readers called it a straw man when the reply post retold Lila Cho's letter as a demand to ban every car by tomorrow. What does the post put in place of her actual letter?

A harsher plan that is easier to attack. Her letter asked the city to start with a downtown car-free hour on Sundays, and the post swings at a total ban dated tomorrow.

Under Dr. Solberg's reading-study essay, a comment skipped the scores from 120 third graders and was tagged ad hominem for dwelling on her 2019 school-board loss. Once tagged, where is that comment aiming its criticism?

At Solberg herself. The lost 2019 election is the attack, and the third-grade scores go unmentioned.

From a bakery that opens at 5 a.m., the paragraph leaped to paving Oak Street, and the tutor marked that leap a non sequitur. The tutor's mark means the paving conclusion has what problem?

It fails to follow from the opening time. A bakery that starts work at five in the morning gives that paragraph no reason to pave Oak Street.

After two warnings a stall may keep its license, the market bylaw said, and the committee spent an hour on that ambiguity. The hour of debate comes from "may" leaving the committee with what?

Two live readings of the same sentence. One reading lets the committee decide, and the other reads the license as promised, so the bylaw will not settle itself.

Bold type on the editorial contest rubric marked one criterion: the piece must answer at least one point raised by the other side. Judges using that line will measure each editorial by what standard?

Whether it faces an opposing point. A piece that never does so misses the test printed in bold.

A donor offering $50,000 to rename the lab, with the gift described as unrestricted, was the hypothetical the ethics board posed to every applicant. What is the point of a donor who is not in the room?

The board can watch the applicant reason about gifts and names before any real check exists. The $50,000 case is constructed so the principle can be argued on its own.

Anika Deshmukh's paper paused on a counterfactual: had the 1968 flood wall stood two feet higher, the lower market would have stayed dry. What altered 1968 is she asking the reader to imagine?

A past in which that extra height kept the water out of the market. The paper uses the imagined wall to throw the real flood into sharper relief.

If her patio could remain open, the cafe owner told the Maple Street hearing, she would accede to a 10 p.m. music cutoff. If she follows through, how does the cutoff become a rule?

She agrees to the demand. The cutoff passes with her yes, and the patio stays open on the terms she named.

Off the library budget and onto his uncle's boat in 1987, the speaker had begun to digress, and the chair tapped the gavel. The boat story moves the hearing in what way?

It pulls the room off the budget in front of it. The 1987 boat is a side path away from the library's numbers.

Fair because it was right, and right because it was fair: the logic tutor labeled that paragraph circular. What fault makes that paragraph collapse?

Each half leans on the other. Fairness cites rightness, rightness cites fairness, and no outside support appears for either word.

Empty bat rack, same bats at the equipment manager's garage sale: the column used those details to insinuate a theft. What charge are those details quietly suggesting?

That the manager took the bats. The column leaves the accusation for the reader to supply from the empty rack and the sale.

A letter to the school board chose to ascribe the row of shop closures on Main to the new parking meters. The letter assigns the meters what role in those closures?

The cause. Empty shops are laid at the meters' door, and the letter presents that assignment as the explanation.

During the judges' huddle, the first reader scored the brief a 9. The second reader said, "I assent." What is the second reader declaring about that score?

She agrees with the 9. Her judgment stands with the first reader's.

All 12 jurors would have to sign the same line before the form could record unanimity on the late filing. Twelve signatures on one line would show what?

Full agreement on that question, a single result with every juror on it.

By 11 p.m. the teachers' bargaining session was a stalemate: the district would add no planning periods, and the union would sign no contract without two per week. With both sides fixed, the session has become what?

A deadlock. The district's refusal and the union's demand for two weekly planning periods have nowhere to meet.

Principal Otis Bergman offered a compromise on phones: seniors could keep theirs at lunch, and ninth grade would lock them in pouches until 3:10. What form of settlement is he offering the two grades?

One in which each side gives something up. Seniors keep phones at lunch, and ninth grade stays in pouches until 3:10.

Between rounds in the state quarterfinal, the debate captain stared at her flow pad. Her partner urged her not to yield after losing the cross-fire on bus fares. What larger surrender is the partner warning her against?

Giving up the rest of the round because one exchange went badly. The partner wants the remaining case kept alive after the fare clash.

A student told lab coordinator Harper Quinn that copying the results table was acceptable because the numbers were facts and facts belong to everyone. Quinn called the excuse casuistry. She hears that line as what sort of performance?

Moral reasoning used as a costume for copying. The appeal to shared facts is a clever path around the rule the student broke.

While the lead still named the wrong principal, the copy chief told the intern to drop the cavil about a comma in footnote 3. In the chief's ear, that comma complaint has what weight?

A petty one. The comma can wait while the lead paragraph still names the wrong principal.

At the public forum, an apologist for the old attendance policy argued that the strict tardy counts had kept the halls orderly. The speaker is serving as what for that policy?

Its defender, giving reasons to keep the old tardy counts in the face of the criticism in the room.

A viral post claimed the Saturday market had raised nearby rents 40 percent in one season, and the magazine assigned June Pell to debunk it. What is her article supposed to do to that post?

Show that the 40 percent claim fails against the lease file. The piece is assigned to take the post apart with those leases.

At the dissertation defense, the author said she would repudiate chapter 2's claim that bilingual ballots lowered turnout in the 2016 ward 4 election. What is she announcing about that claim?

She is disowning it in front of the committee that read the chapter. The turnout claim is one she refuses to stand behind.

Advisor Camila Duarte slid the algae draft back to Tariq Osman and called the position tenable. The cloudy-jar notes now lined up with three July counts from the pond behind the gym. What had those notes and counts made his position?

Sturdy enough to defend. With the jar notes lined up against the July counts, the algae claim can be argued.