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A Speaker's Claims and Support is a free printable Grade 5 English worksheet on summarising claims and explaining what supports each, aligned to Common Core standard SL.5.3. It prints 2 questions with an answer key on its own sheet of paper, in 25 versions that each ask different questions, so no two pupils in the class work from the same page. Print it from the browser or download it as a PDF — no account, no email.

Set 20 of 25 · the same problems every time you open this link.

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Set 1 has all 25 in a single PDF. All 25 sets ask different questions.

A Speaker's Claims and Support

SL.5.3

NameDate

Read the text, then answer the questions.

1.Read the text, then answer the questions.

What Happened to the Textile Towns

Between 1965 and 1990 the British textile industry lost roughly four fifths of its jobs. Three causes are usually given, and they are not equally weighted. Cost is the one most often cited. Spinning and weaving are labour-intensive, and wages in the countries that took the work were a fraction of British wages. This explains a great deal. Investment matters too. Much British machinery dated from before the war. Where firms did re-equip — and some did — they survived longer, which suggests the cost argument is not the whole story. The third cause is the hardest to see: the industry was concentrated. A car plant closing takes a town's largest employer; a mill closing often took its only one, along with the suppliers and the shops that depended on it. That concentration is why the closures show up in the population figures of particular towns and not in national ones.

  1. 1. What is the author's purpose, and how do you know?
  2. 2. Identify which evidence supports which of the three causes.
  3. 3. Quote accurately the words that qualify the cost argument.
2.Read the text, then answer the questions.

The Mill: The Local Paper, June 1980

Whately's Mill closed on Friday with the loss of 214 jobs, the largest single closure in the town since the war. The mill had run since 1868. At its height it employed more than 600. Mr Whately declined to say when he had known the closure was certain. The Chamber of Commerce has called for a public inquiry; the union has called the closure "predictable for two years". The council says a retraining fund will open in September. Four other textile mills within twenty miles have closed since 1975. Nobody the paper spoke to expected the site to be used for textiles again.

  1. 1. Two organisations react. Identify which reason belongs to which.
  2. 2. What is this report's purpose, and how does it differ from the accounts?
  3. 3. Quote accurately the union's description of the closure.

LessonPrint · SL.5.3 · Set 20 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — A Speaker's Claims and Support

Set 20. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. To weigh three explanations rather than assert one — each is introduced and then qualified. 2. Cost: the wage difference. Investment: pre-war machinery and the survival of re-equipped firms. Concentration: the single-employer towns and the population figures. 3. "which suggests the cost argument is not the whole story".
  2. 2.1. The Chamber of Commerce wants an inquiry; the union claims the closure was predictable for two years. 2. To record what happened and who said what — it reports the dispute rather than taking a side. 3. "predictable for two years".

More practice for SL.5.3

Summarise a speaker's claims and say what supports each one.

Teaching this next? Summarising a Speaker's Argument is the 40-minute plan for it, with the misconceptions to expect.

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Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to SL.5.3 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.