Argument: Argument is something that author is trying to support by providing evidence and all

Conclusion: Author's main point. Sometimes it is signaled words like in conclusion, therefore, hence, and thus and other words.
If you need to update that paragraph as your twitter status, how would you summarize it into a sentence?

Claim: Evidence or fact the author is putting forth to support his point

All three words can be used to mean the same thing. A conclusion is clearly what the author wants you to do or wants to convince you of. However, the word "argument" is often meant to refer to the conclusion even though it also refers to the conclusion and the evidence together. So when you are asked to weaken the author's argument you can take this to mean conclusion.

Properly a claim can also be a conclusion. I might claim that "you should study for 2-3 hours per day." This will also be my conclusion as long as I support it with evidence.

On a bold faced question I think that these would be used as synonyms. The author's conclusion is his claim is his argument.

Do you have a particular question where they might be distinguished in some way?

Hi

Even i get confused among all these and end up making wrong choices. In fact I have posted on the forum if someone has some documentation that can help a person to scrutinize bold faced questions well. In case you happen to have laid your hands on one, please do share with me. Tx.

Here is a link to an posting that I wrote detailing a simple way to approach bold-faced questions. https://www.beatthegmat.com/bold-face-cr ... 51164.html

Here is an excerpt from the posting:
Once you have the main conclusion take each bold statement and ask yourself three things:

1) Is there a clear role for the statement? Categories are "Prediction" "main conclusion" "evidence" "opinion" etc. If the role of the statement is not clear then proceed to the next step.

2) How does the statement relate to the main conclusion? Is it the conclusion? Is it evidence in support of the conclusion? Does it undermine the conclusion? etc...

3) How does the statement relate to the other statement? Does it support the other statement? Does the other bold support it? Does it undermine the other statement? etc...

If you understand these three things - usually not too hard to do on most questions - then you are ready to work through the answer choices pretty efficiently.



I hope it helps!