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Sentence Stems for Communicating Responsibly
When engaging in a discussion, participants must clearly convey their ideas while remaining respectful
of others. The following sentence stems provide guidance for various conversational goals, specically:
clarifying a point, connecting a statement to other points, agreeing and disagreeing with other partic-
ipants, changing the subject, and taking responsibility for one’s own communication.
Clarifying Connecting
How is this relevant to your point?
Can you explain what you mean?
So what you’re saying is .
I want to say more about what
said about .
I’d like to add .
I noticed that .
What said reminded me
of .
Agreeing Disagreeing
I agree with
because .
I think made a great
point about .
Yes, and furthermore, .
Although we still disagree on the claim
overall, it seems to me that we can agree
on .
I disagree with
because .
Couldn’t it also be that ?
I see why might say that,
but .
While I think had a point
that , I disagree with the
part where he/she said .
It seems to me that committed
an error in reasoning when he/she
said .
Changing the Subject Taking Responsibility
It seems to me that we’re spending a lot of time
discussing , when maybe
we should be discussing .
I’d like to change the subject
to .
Something I think the other side has not
addressed is .
I must have miscommunicated my point
earlier; I apologize. What I intended to say
was .
Earlier, I neglected to point
out .
I’m sorry, I misunderstood you. I thought you
meant .
You’re right. Those words were hurtful and
uncalled for. I shouldn’t have said that.
Source: Rogers, K., & Simms, J. A. (2015). Teaching argumentation: Activities and games for the classroom. Bloomington,
IN: Marzano Research, pp. 44–45.
