Critical Thinking and Reading Writing@CSU: Writing Guide http://writing.colostate.edu/references/teaching/co300man/index.

cfm Something to keep in mind while planning critical reading/thinking activities is that while we do need to talk about informal logic as it applies to critical reading and writing, this isn't a course in formal logic. Therefore, most of the work we do on fallacies emerges through the discussion of readings, and the handouts included here are meant to be supplementary to the students' investigations into the essays they read. Also, refer students to the Writing Center unit on Toulmin analysis; it's thorough, clear, and helpful. Taken together, critical thinking, reading, and writing are the tripartite soul of CO300. The materials in this section include General Strategies for Critical Reading In one of our PIE meetings, we generated a list of strategies that teachers were finding useful as they helped students become active readers. Here's that starting list; perhaps we'll have time soon to add to it. 1. Start by looking at the ideas in the article. Be sure students understand the basic premise. Then they can generate an outline or a short summary. At the very least, they should mark the thesis and chunk the text into blocks of prose dealing with related sub-points. In other words, help them see the big picture first. 2. After establishing the thesis, have students consider what the author hopes to accomplish. By noting the purpose as specifically as possible, students can often see clues to the argumentative structure. 3. Flesh out some details on the target audience. 4. Depending on the article, you may want to head students in any of these directions next: Where are any stipulative definitions? Do you have questions on specific chunks of text? Can you note any hidden assumptions? What are the key examples or images? How might you synthesize the author's philosophy? 5. Look at strategies for developing the argument. In particular, have students note definitions, problem-solution statements, causal analysis, process analysis, statement or refutation of the opposition, and specific elements of voice (whining, self-aggrandizement, etc.). As teaching options, these have worked well for C0250 teachers: Select specific parts of the argument that you want to concentrate on to meet that day's objectives or goals. Use guided questions. These work nicely in a DAILY or write-to-learn activity. Try a debate and ask students to evaluate the reasonable and unreasonable arguments

that emerge. Discuss realistic solutions to problems posed in the articles. Concentrate on one paragraph or chunk of text with a specific purpose in mind. This strategy works especially well to help students understand voice, for instance. Recycle articles at different points in the term so that you can emphasize different parts of an article. This works especially well after you introduce a new concept or strategy in class. Play devil's advocate, but be sure to tell the class that's what you're doing so students don't misunderstand your advocacy of a given position. Use groups to do any of these activities. Reading for Meaning (LeCourt) After you've read an essay once, use the following set of questions to guide your rereadings of the text. The first set of questions for each category will help you describe and analyze the text; the next set of questions will help focus your response(s). Description 1. Purpose Describe the author's overall purpose (to inform, explore, explain, evaluate, argue, entertain, or other purpose). How does the author want to affect or change the reader? Response 1. Purpose Is the overall purpose clear or muddled? How did the essay or text actually affect you? Did the author's purpose succeed? Was the author's actual purpose different from the stated purpose? Description 2. Audience/Reader Who is the intended audience? What assumptions does the author make about the reader's knowledge or beliefs? From what context or point of view is the author writing? Response 2. Audience/Reader Are you part of the intended audience? Does the author talk to or talk down to the reader? Does the author misjudge the reader? Description 3. Thesis and Main Ideas What question or problem does the author address? What is the author's thesis? What main ideas are related to the thesis? What are the key moments or key passages in the text?

Response 3. Thesis and Main Ideas Where is the thesis stated? Are the main ideas actually related to the thesis? Do key passages convey a message different from the thesis? What assumptions (about the subject or culture) does the author make? Are there problems or contradictions in the essay? What bothers or disturbs you about this essay or text? Where do you agree or disagree? Description 4. Organization and Evidence Where does the author preview the essay's organization? How does the author signal new sections of the essay? What kinds of evidence does the author use (personal experience, descriptions, statistics, other authorities, analytical reasoning, or other)? Response 4. Organization and Evidence Where did you clearly get the author's signals about the essay's organization? Where were you confused about the organization? What evidence was most or least effective? Where did the author rely on assertions rather than on evidence? Description 5. Language and Style What is the author's tone (casual, humorous, ironic, angry, preachy, distant, academic, or other)? Are sentences and vocabulary easy, average, or difficult? What words, phrases, or images recur throughout the text? Response 5. Language and Style Did the tone support or distract from the author's purpose or meaning? Did the sentences or vocabulary support or distract from the purpose or meaning? Did recurring words or images relate to or support the purpose or meaning? Remember that not all these questions will be relevant to any given essay or text, but one or two of these questions may suggest a direction or give a focus to your overall response. When one of these questions suggests a focus for your response to the essay, go back to the text to gather evidence to support your response. Take-Home Toulmin Worksheet Claim: Qualifier(s)-Exception(s)--

Reasons--Why is the writer advancing this claim? List reasons -Examine --Are they good/effective reasons? Explain. Are they relevant to the thesis? Explain. Evidence: List what kinds of evidence (data, personal experience, case studies, citations from an expert, etc.) are offered as support for each reason. Examine --Is the evidence convincing? Is it relevant to the reason it supports? Refutations: What refutations from the opposition does the writer offer? How does the writer respond to each objection? Summarize your results : Give an overall evaluation of the argument. Dialogue With a Text - 1 Using the essay you chose and your summary of it, begin conversi ng with the text. You might refer to pages 49-52 if you need additional help. Begin by asking the author what her thesis is. Q: What is your main claim in this article? Q: What do you mean by (insert words that you don't understand)? Q: I didn't really understand (insert confusing part here). Q: What did you mean by saying this? Now pick one point the essay that you felt strongly about. Paraphrase it till you know you understand it well. Clarify any confusing parts. Q: What values underlie your perspective on this one point? Why do you think the way you do? (Can you press that question further? What implications might follow from what the author is proposing? How would the author respond?) "Try to remember that your point is not to attack or defend, but to probe--to uncover the uncomfortable spots that make both questioner and answerer think harder." --Aims Dialogue With a Text - 2 Good morning! For today's DAILY, you are going to practice writing a dialogue with a text by writing a mini -dialogue with a sample argument. Read the argument below and ask and answer an appropriate question. The argument: I have decided that the best way to evaluate your work in this class is on the basis of how well I like you and how well you treat me. This seems to be a good idea to me because then I can reward people who make me happy and punish those who

don't. Since I have the power to make such a decision, I guess I might as well use it. It seems that it will take me less time to grade papers if I just look at whose paper it is and assign the grade accordingly. Your task: Ask a question which considers the claim and reason given here. Answer it based on the argument itself and the rhetorical context in which it was written. Definitions and Purposes for Critical Thinking (Harper) Critical Thinking "Thinking critically is the ability to understand a concept fully, taking in different sides of an issue or idea while not being swayed by the propaganda or other fraudulent methods used to promote it." --Denise Selleck "A definition of critical thinking is the disposition to think clearly and accurately in order to be fair." --Richard Paul Critical thinkers question their own beliefs as well as those of others, formulate wellreasoned arguments to support their beliefs, recognize the possibility of change in their beliefs, and express their beliefs in clear, coherent language. Logic is the branch of philosophy that studies the consistency of arguments. Audience and Purpose A major distinction between writing outside the classroom and writing for a class lies in the audience to whom we write, what novelist and essayist Virginia Woolf refers to as "the face beneath the page." Job-related writing tasks include a designated audience and a real purpose, but in a class, students are asked to write papers for the teacher to critique and grade, usually with no specified purpose beyond successfully completing an assignment. (In this class, you will create your own purposes/audiences for your essays). Contrary to the advice of many wri ting texts, essays in real life (and most college-level academic settings) are not limited to prescribed numbers of paragraphs or a required sequence of parts (nor to the rule "never use I"). Essays, whether explanatory or persuasive, should be designed to communicate a writer's ideas in such a way that the writer's purpose is clear and logical and satisfies the needs of a particular audience. "Thinking is the activity I love best, and writing to me is simply thinking through my fingers." --Isaac Asimov (Excerpts from Ergo, Cooper & Patten, 2 -11) Subjective and Objective Reasoning (Costello)

This exercise gets students thinking about the biases inherent in decision-making processes. In small groups, students are asked to assume the role of a hospital boards of directors who must choose three people (from a list of fifteen or so) to receive a kidney dialysis. Here's the procedure: I. Ask students to get into small groups and give each group a copy of Handout #1: The Situation You are on the board of directors at PVH. In addition to approving budgets and formulating policies, the board must also decide which patients receive kidney dialyses, as the demand exceeds the hospital's resources. You have been given a "finalists" list-a list of those patients who have been judged to respond equally well to the treatment. The list names ten people. Only three spaces are available. Directions: 1. Independently, choose your three winners. Write a short explanation about how and why you chose as you did. 2. Meet with your board. 3. Come to a decision. Ask one person to record the process by which you reached this decision and be prepared to explain it to the class. II. Field questions about the task; then give each group handout #2: The Patients Alexander Whitfield: male, 72 yrs; doctor on the verge of discovering cure for cancer Juan Rodriquez: male; 28 yrs; policeman; loving husband and father of five children Mary Ellen Smythye: female; 24 yrs; schoolteacher; single; lives in Chicago Nick Roshnikov: male; 55 yrs; physicist, expert in atomic power Evelyn Jones: female; 12 yrs; 8th grader; ghetto resident and gang member Christie Brown: female; 20 yrs; college student; IQ 165; double major in engineering and law Kim Hogland: female; 43 yrs; social worker; active in church; state senator Huey Schickel: male; 9 yrs; farm boy; IQ 170; very musically inclined Sabrina Murphy: female; 16 yrs; high school student; low grades; cheerleader; has a "reputation" among the guys Chris Haller: male; 45 yrs; distinguished college professor; well-liked by his students III. Ask the students to discuss the process they went through in selecting their patients. What criteria did they establish for selection? Did they establish these criteria beforehand? What biases did they uncover as they tried to determine which patients should live and die? Connect their discussion to subjective and objective forms of reasoning and ask them what the most objective form of reasoning would be in this

case. (Molly says that sometimes her students do come up with a lottery system, but not often.) IV. Ask students to reconvene in their groups, and give each a copy of handout #3. Ask the students to reevaluate their patient selection in light of the new information. Further Information on the Patients Whitfield has been receiving chemotherapy treatments for lymphatic cancer for the last 14 months. Prognosis is poor. Rodriquez killed one mafia man and wounded another while trying to save his children-the courts won't let him testify for his own safety. Smythye is pregnant and has spent the last six weeks in a drug rehab program. Roshnikov is a Russian spy. Jones has an IQ of 145--very high for her age. Brown is lesbian. Hogland saved a little boy's life ten years ago by donating one of her kidneys for transplant. Schickel is an adopted child whose parents were murdered. Murphy is emotionally upset about her parents' recent divorce. She has spent the last two months in counseling at a mental health center. Haller is an alcoholic and accused child molester. V. Discuss with students how they reacted to handout #3. Did the new information change their choices of patients? Reconnect to subjective and objective forms of reasoning. Fallacies in Logic Logical fallacies are errors in reasoning. The use of them, whether deliberate or not, can cause a reader to reject your point of view. They are often the result of a lack of evidence or careful thought on a subject. You should check your rough drafts carefully to avoid them. Here are the most common types: 1. Hasty generalization--the writer bases the argument on insufficient or unrepresentative evidence. (For example, say you wanted to find out how men feel about the new car ads directed toward women, and you interviewed only members of the men's movement. To say that men feel those ads are sexist based only on that evidence would be a hasty generalization.) 2. Non Sequitur ("it doesn't follow")--the writer's conclusion is not necessarily a logical result of the facts. (Conclude that because Jane Smith is a brilliant historian, she will therefore be a brilliant history teacher is a non sequitur.) 3. Begging the question--the writer presents as truth what is supposed to be proven by the argument. (For example, if you say that "dangerous pornography should be banned," you are begging the reader to get something for nothing. That is, you are giving no evidence for what must first be argued, not merely asserted, that pornography is dangerous.)

4. Red herring--the writer introduces an irrelevant point to divert the readers' attention from the main issue. (You are yelling at your roommate because s/he never does the dishes when it's his/her turn. S/he turns around and says to you "yeah, well, what about that $20 you owe me?") 5. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this) --the writer mistakes a temporal connection for a causal connection. (An hour before the rape, the man had bought a Playboy; therefore, because he read the magazine, he raped the woman.) 6. Argument ad hominem ("to the man")--the writer attacks the opponent's c haracter rather than the opponent's argument. ("Dr. Bloom can't be a competent marriage counselor because she's been divorced twice.") 7. Faulty authority--the writer uses ordinary people, or lay people, as evidence for a specialized area of knowledge. (You interview your roommate, an average college student with no special knowledge or skills, about what he thinks about gays in the military and use that as evidence that they shouldn't be there.) Identifying Logical Fallacies (Becker) Determine the potential persuasiveness of each argument. If the arguments are not persuasive because of one or more logical fallacies, identify the fallacies and explain how they render the argument nonpersuasive. 1. All wars are not wrong. The people who say so are cowards. 2. Either we legalize marijuana or we watch a steady increase in the number of our citizens who break the law. 3. Abortion is murder because it is the intentional taking of a human life. 4. We don't dare send weapons to guerrillas in Central America. If we do so, we will next send in military advisers, then a special forces battalion, and then a large number of troops. Finally, we will be in all-out war. 5. All those tornadoes started happening right after they tested the A-bombs. The Abomb testing has changed our weather. 6. Politicians can't be trusted because they lack integrity. 7. Closing the gay baths to prevent the spread of AIDS is like closing bars to prevent the spread of alcoholism. 8. Arnold Palmer says Gooey Oil keeps his old tractor running sharp; therefore, Gooey oil is good oil. 9. NASA's safety program is obviously unsatisfactory. The explosion of the Challenger space shuttle makes this clear. 10. I wouldn't consider reading William Safire's weekly, language columns. How can you possibly respect him when you know that he wrote speeches for Nixon? 11. How could Thomas Jefferson have written that "all men are created equal"? People are obviously born with differing abilities and differing needs. It would clearly be wrong to treat everyone the same. (Examples from Rottenberg, Cooper and Patton, Bean and Ramage.) Questioning Statistical Evidence

In your research, you come across an interesting piece of information: the annual income for a group of first-year college graduates averages around twelve thousand dollars. Based on the data provided for the group of college grad's incomes, would you say the statement is true or false? Yearly income for each member of the group: Dan $12,000 Jim $12,000 Carla $13,000 Tom $15,000 Betty $12,000 Jack $ 9,500 Dawn $12,000 Jenny $10,500 ************************************************************************** No, this is not a math test. The problem here is vague, non-specific language such as the word "average." A statement that the annual income for a group of first- year college graduates is twelve thousand dollars is meaningless unless we know whether that figure refers to the arithmetic average of all the salaries added together (the mean average); whether it means that half of the group made more and half made-less (the median average); or whether more people make twelve thousand dollars than any other amount (the modal average). So the answer is true for mean average, false for median average, and true for modal average. Yes, this was a trick question. However, it was intended to make you critical readers of research, to make you aware that vague language can distort facts--and thus spells trouble.