What I have learned in this class

One specific thing I have learned in this class is being able to recognize whether a sentence is claim or not. I learned that a claim needs to be either true or false in order for it to be considered a claim. For example, the sentence “Stinky tofu is good” is a declarative sentence that can be either true or false so this is considered a claim. Some people may think stinky tofu tastes bad because of the smell but it is not true for everyone. I actually think it tastes bad but my parents actually do like it. However, some claims are too vague to be taken as claims. According to the textbook, a sentence is vague is “there are so many ways to understand it that we can’t settle on one of those without the speaker making it clear”. For example, the sentence “Men are stronger than women“ is pretty vague because we do not know what the word “stronger” meant. What are men stronger for? Are they stronger physically or for emotionally? (Epstein, 2006). Before I took this class, I had limited knowledge of what a claim is because I thought that every sentence I see is a claim. Thanks to critical thinking, now I can be able to distinguish between certain claims!