Which one of the following sentences is giving a reason to the reader?

More controversial is the question as to whether politicians were responsible for the lack of real democracy.
Partly because of this it was inevitable that war broke out in the winter months.
It is tempting to pose another question.
Some authorities have implied that world population figures are stabilizing (Yergin, 1997, Fallow, 1998)

Which one of the following sentences is comparing two things with each other?

Mention should also be made of government funding of the universities.
While exports to Asia are large, those to Europe and the Americas are much more important.
Of course it could be argued that the restaurant should be closed down.
The following passage may be taken as typical of this kind of evidence.

Which one of the following sentences is criticizing another argument?

However it is not true to claim that there was no opposition to the move.
My own rough calculations summarized in table 1 confirm the thesis.
In his article he argued that there were many reasons for the colonization of Africa (Hobsbawm, 1996).
In defence of this view, a number of explanations have been offered.

Which one of the following sentences is conceding a point to another argument and then criticizing it?

Was it such a bad thing to allow the demonstrations? Not necessarily.
It is true that the protestors had grievances. However to suggest that this explained the violence of the demonstrations would be to go too far.
It is interesting to speculate on what would have happened if the demonstrations had been allowed to go ahead.
It should also be noted that the police intervention worsened the situation.

Which one of the following sentences is referring forwards in the text?

In the final analysis this may indeed be the best explanation of all.
As we noted in the previous chapter, there are a number of possible explanations.
This was one of the most important reasons why the theory failed.
The previous section considered only proven options. Now we are going to look at some untried possibilities.

Which one of the following sentences is limiting the scope of a paper?

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the economy will remain weak as long as property prices are down.
For reasons of space I am unable to consider this in the present discussion.
At the same time it is true to say that the US economy has been remarkable strong during the 1990’s.
But there is a need for qualification.

Which one of the following sentences is qualifying an argument?

One way to answer this question is to try to see if the evidence is sufficient.
To some extent it is true to say that global warming explains everything.
To put it simply the polar ice caps are melting at a rate of 0.6% per annum.
More detailed studies support this conclusion.

Which one of the following sentences is referring to the author’s own evidence?

There are however a number of difficulties with Rosenbaum’s critique.
It has also been persuasively argued that Christianity is in decline (Ferguson,1977)
My own rough calculations are summarized in table 3.
This line of argument has been further developed by Smith (1987b).

Which one of the following sentences is focusing on the most important point?

Of these points, the first needs to be discussed in more detail.
What are the arguments on the other side?
There are various ways in which we might attempt to tackle this problem.
The following passage may be taken as typical of this kind of evidence.