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Worksheet Grade 12 English Language Arts

Attribution and Reporting Verbs in Linthaven's Brown Water Story

A grade 12 ELA worksheet on who is credited with each claim in a news feature about a fictional town's discolored tap water, and on what reporting verbs do to belief.

Objectives

  1. Students will sort sentences into unattributed assertions, attributed claims, and document-sourced claims.
  2. Students will explain how the connotation of a reporting verb shifts a reader's belief about a source.
  3. Students will rewrite loosely sourced sentences so that each claim can be traced or checked.

Vocabulary

Lead (Pb)
A soft gray metal that is poisonous, especially for children. It can get into drinking water from old pipes and plumbing, so utilities work hard to control it.

Also: attribution, reporting verb, connotation, paraphrase, sourcing

Teacher overview

A news story about a utility is built out of other people's statements, and the reporter's real choices are which statements to attribute, to whom, and with which verb. Those choices are almost invisible to a reader who is following the story rather than the sourcing. This worksheet gives students a short feature from a fictional town paper about discolored tap water, together with the utility's own complaint log, and asks them to sort every sentence by how it is sourced, weigh the connotation of the reporting verbs, and rewrite the sentences that cannot be traced.

Attribution and Reporting Verbs in Linthaven's Brown Water Story — Grade 12 English Language Arts
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Worksheet

Linthaven, its water department, and the newspaper below are fictional, invented for this worksheet. Read the article and the complaint log, then answer the questions.

Residents Say the Brown Water Is Back The Linthaven Register

A. For the third summer in a row, households on the east side of Linthaven are running their taps until the water clears.

B. The Linthaven Water Department admits that manganese drawn from the Penhale Reservoir intake is behind the discoloration.

C. "We see it when the reservoir turns over in late summer, and the deeper water we pull is low in oxygen," said Dana Ostrow, the department's operations manager.

D. Ostrow claims the department has spent two seasons adjusting how it treats the water.

E. Residents on Ashwood Road insist that nothing has changed.

F. The department's complaint log shows 61 discolored water calls in August, up from 24 in June.

G. A department fact sheet concedes that the east side notices the problem first because water reaches that area last.

H. Neighbors have complained for years about stained laundry.

I. The department acknowledged in June that a planned filter upgrade had been delayed twice.

J. The problem will not be fixed before next summer.

Linthaven Water Department discolored water complaint log

Month Discolored water calls Reservoir intake gate in use Filter upgrade status
June 24 Upper Design review
July 39 Upper Design review
August 61 Lower Delayed
September 44 Lower Delayed

Questions

  1. List every sentence that states something as fact without attributing it to a person or a document.
  2. Sentence J predicts an outcome and attributes the prediction to no one. Explain what a reporter would need before publishing it as written, then rewrite it with attribution.
  3. Rank the reporting verbs "said," "claims," "admits," "concedes," and "insist" from most neutral to most loaded. Explain your placement of "claims" in one or two sentences.
  4. Rewrite Sentence B with a neutral reporting verb, and state what changes for the reader.
  5. Sentence D uses "claims" for a statement about what the department did. Explain the effect on a reader's belief, and name the kind of evidence that would let the reporter write "said" instead.
  6. The article uses "admits" and "concedes" for the department and "insist" for residents. Explain in two or three sentences what that pattern suggests about how the reporter weighs the two sides.
  7. Using the complaint log, decide whether Sentence F is accurate. Show the figures you checked, and state one thing the sentence leaves out.
  8. Sentence F attributes a claim to a document rather than to a person. Give one advantage of document attribution over a quotation from an official.
  9. Sentence H names a group but is still weakly sourced. Explain why, then rewrite it so that a reader could check it.
  10. Sentence G paraphrases a fact sheet rather than quoting it. Explain the risk of using "concedes" for a paraphrase, then rewrite the sentence so the paraphrase is clearly marked as one.
  11. Sentence B uses the present tense "admits" while Sentence I uses the past tense "acknowledged." Explain what the difference in tense tells a reader about when each statement was made and how current it is.
  12. Write a two-sentence lead for this story in which every factual claim is either attributed to a named source or checkable against the complaint log.

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Answer Key
  1. Answer: Sentences A, H, and J. Each states something as established without naming a person or a document, though A is the most defensible because a reporter can observe taps running and report it firsthand.
  2. Answer: A reporter needs a source willing to say it, such as the department's own schedule for the filter upgrade, or a document that sets a completion date. A rewrite is close to: "Ostrow said the filter upgrade will not be finished before next summer." Accept any version that assigns the prediction to a named source or a cited document.
  3. Answer: From most neutral to most loaded: said, claims, insist, concedes, admits. "Claims" belongs near the neutral end in form but carries doubt in practice, because readers hear it as a signal that the reporter is not vouching for the statement. Accept other orders that put "said" at the neutral end and justify each placement.
  4. Answer: "The Linthaven Water Department says that manganese drawn from the Penhale Reservoir intake is behind the discoloration." With "says," the department is reporting a technical finding; with "admits," the same sentence implies the department was previously hiding or denying it, which the article never establishes.
  5. Answer: "Claims" invites the reader to doubt that the adjustments happened, so a factual statement about the department's own operations reads as a defensive assertion. A treatment log, a work order, or a report on file would let the reporter write "said" and, better still, cite the record.
  6. Answer: Answers will vary in wording. A strong response notes that "admits" and "concedes" cast the department as giving ground under pressure while "insist" casts residents as stubborn or unpersuaded. The pairing frames the story as a contest rather than a shared problem, and it does so through verb choice rather than through any evidence in the article.
  7. Answer: Accurate but selective. The log shows 61 calls in August and 24 in June, so both figures are right. The sentence leaves out July's 39 calls, which show a steady climb across the summer rather than a sudden jump between two months.
  8. Answer: A document can be produced and reread by anyone, so the claim stays checkable after the interview is over and does not depend on one person's memory or willingness to repeat it.
  9. Answer: "Neighbors" names no one, "for years" fixes no period, and nothing indicates how the reporter learned it. A rewrite is close to: "Four households on Ashwood Road told the Register they have reported stained laundry to the department since the first discolored water complaints." Accept any version that supplies a countable source and a bounded time frame.
  10. Answer: "Concedes" attaches a strong attitude to words the fact sheet may not have used, so the reporter's framing can be mistaken for the document's own tone. A marked rewrite is close to: "According to a department fact sheet, the east side notices the problem first because water reaches that area last." That version attributes the content without assigning a posture.
  11. Answer: The present tense in "admits" presents the statement as the department's current position, while the past tense and the date in "acknowledged in June" fix that statement in time and leave open whether it still holds. A reader can check the June statement against the September log entry, but has no way to date the position reported in the present tense.
  12. Answer: Answers will vary. A proficient lead attributes or grounds every claim, for example: "Discolored water complaints to the Linthaven Water Department rose from 24 in June to 61 in August, according to the department's own log. The department has attributed the color to manganese drawn through its Penhale Reservoir intake, and its log shows the plant switched to the lower intake gate in August." Reject any lead that carries an unsourced prediction or an unnamed group.

Differentiation

Support

Give these students the fictional article with the reporting verbs already circled and a three-column sorting chart labeled "no source named," "person named," and "document named." Assign items 1, 3, 4, 7, and 9 only, and provide the sentence frame "This sentence is hard to check because ..." for item 9.

Extension

Ask students to rewrite the whole fictional article as the department's own newsletter item, keeping every factual claim intact, then annotate the three places where their version changes the reporting verbs and explain what each change does to the reader's trust in the department.

ELL supports

Pre-teach the five reporting verbs as a set, with one plain sentence showing each in a non-water context, since the difference among them is connotation rather than meaning. Post a two-column chart for "attributed" and "not attributed," and allow items 1 and 7 to be answered with lists and figures rather than sentences.

Extensions

Have students draft ten interview questions for the fictional operations manager that could turn the article's three unattributed sentences into sourced ones, then trade lists and mark which questions could be answered with a document rather than an opinion. Ask them to write a short note explaining why a document answer is usually the stronger one for a story of this kind.