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Handling Ambiguity and Uncertainty

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  • Communicative Objective: Learn to discuss uncertain, incomplete, contradictory, or open-ended information without oversimplifying it, while distinguishing probability, possibility, inference, and unresolved ambiguity.
  • 5 Core Functional Sentences:
    1. The available evidence is compatible with several interpretations, none of which can yet be ruled out conclusively.
    2. It may be tempting to attribute the change to a single factor, but the causal picture remains considerably more complex.
    3. The discrepancy could reflect an error in measurement, although alternative explanations remain equally plausible.
    4. We should distinguish what can reasonably be inferred from the data from what remains purely speculative.
    5. In the absence of stronger evidence, the most defensible position is to acknowledge the uncertainty rather than artificially resolve it.
  • Grammar Focus: Epistemic modality, passive reporting structures, relative clauses, concessive qualification, extraposition, and infinitive complements for expressing uncertainty.
  • Vocabulary Focus: discrepancy, inference, speculative, inconclusive, defensible
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