|
STUDENT RESOURCES : CRITICAL THINKING & WRITING
Logic and critical reasoning are concerned with arguments, and one of the better ways of learning about arguments is through practice in writing them. The present booklet provides such practice through exercises that require at least 9000 words of student writing. The booklet is intended to fulfill the writing component of certain writing-intensive logic and critical reasoning courses, but independently, it serves as a general reinforcement of the principles presented in Chapter 1 of A Concise Introduction to Logic. One of the chief difficulties that students face in their writing assignments is a sheer lack of experiential (or conceptual) material to put into words. The assigned topic is often abstract, and the student has no deposit of experience from which to draw and no stimulus to the imagination to produce new experience vicariously. The present booklet responds to this need by supplying material that engages the student's existing experience and stimulates the imagination so as to render the construction of even lengthy arguments a fairly easy task. The booklet is divided into two sections. The first, which deals with the writing of relatively short arguments, provides descriptions of ordinary human situations that are calculated to get the student thinking. Lists of facts are given for premise material, and the student is challenged to distinguish relevant facts from irrelevant ones. Finally, the student is shown how to supplement the list of relevant facts with additional facts drawn from his or her own experience and how to convert this material into an argument that supports a designated conclusion. The second section provides instruction on writing longer argumentative passages. As a partial source of subject matter and a stimulus to the imagination, brief literary selections are given on topics of general interest. These selections are intended to serve as "springboards" for argument construction. Instruction is given on how to extract premise material from the given selection, supplement it with new material from one's own experience, evaluate it for truth and reasonableness, and use it to support a designated conclusion. Before beginning this booklet, the student should have finished Chapter 1 of A Concise Introduction to Logic. Additional practice in constructing long arguments is given in Exercise 9.1 of that book.
|