Identify the role | Video lesson

- [Instructor] Let's identify the question before we do anything else. "The statement that the school system needs reform "figures in the candidate's argument "in which one of the following ways?" This is an Identify the Role Question, or Role, for short. That means that the answer will describe what a certain claim is doing in the passage, but I want you to notice that it's not about what a claim is saying, it's about what a claim is doing. The wrong choices will describe roles that aren't actually what the claim in question is doing. The difference between what a claim is saying and what a claim is doing, is like the difference between describing what something is, and what it does. So let's say in my hand I'm holding a pencil. That's what the object is, but what it does, or in other words, what its role is, can vary. Then maybe I'm using it to write. Maybe I'm using it as a paperweight. Maybe I have it in my hair as decoration. That's what we mean by role. So pause your video now if you'd like to try this question on your own. Otherwise, let's go into the explanation. Okay, let's attack this question together, and by the way, it can often be helpful before you read the stimulus to just mark in the margins where the claim that we care about is located, and then read the stimulus. So, the claim we care about is that the school system needs reform. And it looks like that claim is right here in the middle. So I'm gonna mark it in the margins in a different way than I would mark the conclusion, or the evidence, for example. And then we don't have to keep hunting for it later. Okay, now let's read the stimulus, and as we do, see if you can determine what the function of the marked claim is. The candidate says, "The children in our nation "need a better education. "My opponent maintains that our outdated school system "is the major impediment to achieving this goal. "In fact, our school system does need reform. "Nonetheless, my opponent's position places "far too much blame on our schools, "for it seems to equate education with schooling, "yet other parts of society are at least as responsible "for educating our youth as our schools are." All right, maybe you have an idea of what the claim is doing in the passage, but just in case you don't, let's take a look piece-by-piece. It's usually a good idea to determine the main conclusion right away, but that might not work as well in this question, because the entire passage just sounds so opinionated, and we don't really see any strong conclusion keywords that we can start with. So let's go through claim-by-claim instead. The first claim is that the children in our nation need a better education. That certainly sounds like a conclusion out of context, but it isn't the main conclusion. The reason we know that is that the candidate's agenda isn't to prove that the children need a better education. In other words, the rest of the passage doesn't answer the question, why do children need a better education? It's not providing support for that. So, this first claim is probably context. The next claim, "My opponent maintains that." Okay, well, this is definitely not the main conclusion, because it's the opponent's opinion. The opponent believes that our outdated school system is the big obstacle to getting a better education. This is providing us more context, because we're learning the opponent's point of view. The next claim is the one that we're asked about and it says, "In fact, our school system does need reform." Well, that's actually in agreement with what the opponent said. That means that this is a point of overlap between the candidate and the opponent, and because the next phrase starts with "nonetheless," it feels like we're finally structurally getting to our main conclusion, that the opponent's position puts too much blame on the schools, and we can feel good about this, too, because of the word, "for," which signals support here. So our prediction, and it's good to have a pretty strong prediction for these Role Questions, is that the claim we were asked about is a point of overlap between the candidate and the opponent. Let's find the match for that prediction. A, "It is the main conclusion "that the argument is attempting to establish "about the position of the candidate's opponent." Nope. We recognize that the main conclusion is that the opponent puts too much blame on our schools. Everything in the passage is either providing context for that assertion, or explaining why the candidate believes that, so we can cross this off. B, "It is offered as an example "of one of the social problems for which "the argument proposes a solution." This isn't a match for our prediction, and, the candidate never proposes any kind of solution. The candidate just criticizes the opponent's stance. C, "It is cited as establishing the candidate's contention "that far too much is being blamed on schools." This isn't a match, even though this choice does get the conclusion right. The problem here is that the claim in question isn't establishing anything. You can think of establishing as proving, and the claim that we care about isn't proving the conclusion. It's a place where the opponent and the candidate agree, but it's not explaining why far too much is being blamed on schools, so we can eliminate this. D, "It is used to indicate how the failings "of the school system are partially responsible "for society's problems." Nope. Nobody in this passage said that the failings of the school system are at all responsible for society's problems. So since that's not anyone's opinion, then proving it can't be the purpose of the claim that we care about. Well, that leaves us with E, and let's see why that has to be the answer. E says, "It is a limited concession "made to the candidate's opponent in the context "of a broader challenge to the opponent's position." Yeah, this is a match for the prediction we made. It is a limited concession, because the candidate and the opponent agree that the school system needs reform. It's limited because then the opponent places more blame on the schools and the candidate places less blame on the schools, and that's the broader challenge that's described in the answer. The candidate challenges how much blame the opponent assigns to schools, and so this choice accurately describes what the claim is doing in the passage. So to recap, for Identify the Role Questions, it's helpful to mark the claim that you're being asked about first, and then try to analyze the structure of the passage. Where's the main conclusion? If the claim you're asked about ends up being the main conclusion, then you're done. If the claim that you're asked about is part of the support, then you'll have to figure out what exactly the claim is doing in the support, and again, the emphasis here is on what the arguer is doing, not in the details of what the arguer is saying.