Evidence is what you point to. Explanation is what you say about it so that the reader sees why it proves your claim. This skill decides whether a paragraph persuades or only lists facts, and it appears in every argument task you write.
It follows building a paragraph around a precise claim, because you need a claim to link the evidence to.
What does a good link look like?
A strong paragraph moves in four steps: claim, evidence, explanation, link back. The explanation is the step most students skip. Without it, the reader has to guess how your example supports your point.
A useful test is to ask “so what?” after your evidence. The answer to that question is the explanation.
How to write the link, step by step
- State the claim in one precise sentence.
- Give one piece of evidence, introduced clearly, with its source or context if it has one.
- Say what the evidence shows, in your own words, without repeating the claim.
- Give the reason it matters, which means the cause, the effect or the consequence.
- Link back to the claim with a short closing sentence.
Worked example
Claim: School libraries should stay open until 6 p.m., because evening hours reach students who cannot study at home.
Suppose a school survey (invented here for practice) asked 120 students where they do homework. Of these, 84 said their home is too noisy or they have no quiet desk.
Check the figure: 84 ÷ 120 = 0.7, which is 70%.
Evidence sentence: In a survey of 120 students, 84 (70%) said they have no quiet place to do homework at home.
What it shows: For most of those surveyed, the barrier is space, not motivation.
Why it matters: A library open only until 4 p.m. closes before these students can use it, so the people who need the space most lose it at the hour when homework is actually done.
Link back: Extending the hours to 6 p.m. would therefore reach exactly the students the current timetable excludes.
Put together, the paragraph reads as one piece of reasoning rather than a claim with a number attached.
The mistake to watch for
Restating, not explaining: In a survey of 120 students, 84 said they have no quiet place at home. This shows that the library should stay open longer.
The second sentence only repeats the claim. It does not tell the reader what the number reveals or why a longer opening time follows from it.
The correction is to replace “this shows that [claim]” with a sentence about what the evidence reveals. Add why that leads to the claim: “This suggests that the problem is space rather than motivation, so a space that stays open later solves it.”
Check yourself
1. Mark which sentence is the explanation. (a) After-school club numbers rose from 18 to 27 students. (b) The rise suggests the club now fits timetables that had excluded working students.
Show answer
(b) is the explanation: it says what the change means. (a) is the evidence.
2. Using the evidence in 1(a), what is the percentage increase? Write one sentence that explains why it matters for a claim that the club should run twice a week.
Show answer
Increase = 27 − 18 = 9 students. 9 ÷ 18 = 0.5, so the rise is 50%. A sample sentence: A rise of half in membership shows demand is growing faster than one weekly session can serve, so a second session would meet existing need rather than create it.
3. What is wrong with this link? “Forty students joined the debate team. That proves debate is popular.”
Show answer
The second sentence restates a label (“popular”) for the number. It does not explain what forty students show about the claim being argued, or why that matters. A better link would connect the figure to the claim, for example that strong interest justifies timetabled space for debate.
Where this leads next
Once your explanation links every example, move to ordering arguments for a coherent progression. For a revision habit, the writing revision compare view shows a first and second draft side by side.
If you can write the explanation in class but skip it under time pressure, online one-to-one English First Language tuition gives you a teacher who notices the moment the reasoning goes missing.