Critical Thinking Skills: Arguments and Explanations

Writing the main discussion of your Extended Project requires you to be a critical thinker. This means that you don’t take anything that you read on face value, you develop your own opinions about the relative merit of each piece of literature you read, and you ask yourself ‘Why?’ a lot!

What you are being asked to do is to construct an ARGUMENT, which is different from constructing a description or explanation. This week’s lesson targets the skill of assessing arguments, and constructing your own.

Activity: Look at the following and identify which is an argument and which is an explanation. Once you have finished, compare your answers with the person next to you and discuss the difference between an argument and an explanation.

1. A study has found that red wine is a rich source of polyphenols, which are linked to long life. They also have an anti-oxidant effect which combats cancer and herat disease. We should clearly ditch the guilt and savour a health-giving glass or two.

2. There has been a rise in the number of cases of measles in the UK since 1998. This can be explained by bugs which are resistant to antibiotics. Scientists are working hard to develop new drugs to combat this.

3. Globalisation came to be seen as more than simply a way of doing business, or running financial markets - it became a process. From then on the word took on a life of its own. Centuries earlier, in a similar manner, the techniques of industrial manufacturing led to the changes associated with the process of industrialisation, as former country dwellers migrated to the cramped but booming industrial cities to tend the new machines. (The Guardian, 31st October 2002)

4. Television distorts important debates and ideas. Successive debates between American presidential candidates have been won, according to polls conducted after the broadcast, by the candidate with the best appearance and snappy one liners rather than the candidate with the best arguments. We should therefore ban television debates of this kind.

So what is an argument?

A03 (develop and realise) forms the bulk of the marks within the Extended Project (a maximum of 24/54). This tests your ability to construct and sustain a coherent argument, which requires polished thinking skills. The examiners’ mark scheme tells us that you must be able to: show a thorough and perceptive understanding of the topic area and a clearly argued and well-thought out argument that answers the research question and is supported by several lines of reasoning. Counter arguments or alternative interpretations are considered carefully and systematically in the discussion. There is a clear and well-developed conclusion that proficiently summarises the point of view and the case that has been made.

Reasons and Conclusions

Arguments contain reasons and conclusions.

A reason is a statement that aims to persuade the reader to accept a conclusion A conclusion is what the reader is meant to accept, based on the reasons given.

Example: the weather is very cold today. Therefore you should put on a warm coat.

Activity: Which is the reason and which is the conclusion? How do you know this?

TIP! Always think ‘what is this passage trying to convince me of?’ If you insert ‘because’ before the reason and ‘therefore’ before the conclusion, you should be able to work out which is which (because it is very cold today, therefore you should put on a warm coat). Remember that conclusions don’t always have to be a full sentence, they can just be part of a sentence which also contains a reason!

Reasons are usually supported with evidence; you may either accept or reject the reason (and conclusion!) based upon the evidence given.

Example: The weather is very cold today (Reason). It is -1 degrees outside. (Evidence). Therefore you should put on a warm coat. (Conclusion).

How does the use of evidence or examples improve the quality of an argument, and make it more persuasive? How might this help you with the writing of your EP?

How to use thinking skills in your reading

1. First, you need to identify the conclusion: of what is the author trying to persuade you?2. Break down the argument into reasons, evidence/examples, which are used to support the

conclusion.3. Assess whether the reasons/evidence given is strong enough to support the conclusion, or

whether there are any flaws in the reasoning (more of that next week!).

The following questions should help you to assess what you read more effectively:

An argument contains one or more reason and a conclusion. It is the attempt by a writer to persuade the reader, listener or viewer of

something. An explanation is not persuasive: it merely ‘states the facts’.

Is this evidence precisely relevant?

Is this evidence sufficient to lead to the conclusion?

Are there other, alternative conclusions that could be drawn from the evidence?

How big is the sample (if using a statistic)?

Is the sample representative (does it represent all the people it needs to)?

Could the evidence have been misinterpreted?

Activity: Identify the reasons and conclusion in each of the following passages and then identify two weaknesses in the use of evidence in each passage. Assess the overall effectiveness of the arguments, based on the weaknesses you have discovered.

1. Only four of the eleven, driverless robotic cars entered for the Urban Challenge (a competition held in October 2007 in a simulated suburb outside Los Angeles) finished the course without freezing up or crashing into each other or buildings. This shows that driverless, robotic cars are not likely to be safer than humans soon.

2. Many parents would prefer their children to stay in school for their sixth form education. However, evidence from 2004/05 shows that students at Lands End Sixth Form College thought that the education they received was of a very high quality, with 60% rating it as good or better. With this in mind, the British Government should continue to close school sixth forms in favour of colleges.

3. A recent poll suggested that 55% of the population (based on a sample of more than 10,000) supported the use of the death penalty for convicted murderers. Previous votes in the Houses of Parliament have consistently opposed the use of the detah penalty. Members of Parliament should represent the views of the British people. The current views of the people are clearly not being represented by our MPs so we should lobby MPs to ensure that there is a new vote on this issue in the near future.

4. 62% of cartoon movies watched by young children on video or DVD contain images of injuries caused by violence and nearly half of these are fatal injuries. Children are easily frightened by these images and there is a relationship between time spent watching television and sleep disturbances caused by nightmares. This shows that watching television contributes to sleep problems in young children.

Using counter-argument

It may be tempting to avoid dealing with counter-arguments in order to make your own position look stronger. However, this only weakens your argument, because you have failed to deal with the opposing side. You must always create a BALANCED argument that critically assesses alternative views and demonstrates why the position you are taking is the stronger one.

Making this relevant to your EP:

Your title needs to allow room for an argument, rather than an explanation. If you choose the title ‘what are the reasons for the popularity of football in the UK’, you will only be writing an explanation. If you modify that to, ‘to what extent is the celebrity

status of footballers responsible for the popularity of football in the UK’, you will be able to construct an argument.

You need to construct an argument in your main discussion that assesses evidence and tries to persuade the reader (examiner) that your view should be accepted.

This requires you to support your reasons with evidence, and to supply a variety of different reasons in support of your view.

You should also use counter-arguments, assess their strengths and weaknesses, and then go onto demonstrate, with evidence and reasoning, why they are weaker than your position.

Prep: read the article below and answer the questions on the next page. This is the way that you should approach your reading for the EP.

Organic Food: What’s All the Fuss About?

Organic farmers use natural methods such as fertilising their land with animal droppings. Conventional farmers employ a variety of methods, including the use of man-made fertiliers and pesticides. We are constantly told that an organic approach to farming would be better for us and better for the environment. Yet organic farming is an impractical system of food production, primarily because it is incapable of feeding the world.

Organic farming is less efficient than conventional farming as it requires more land and more energy to produce the same amount of food. For example, 122sq m of land is needed to produce a tonne of organic vine tomatoes. The figure for conventionally-grown loose tomateaes is 19 sq m. The same is true for meat farming. It takes 25% more energy to produce an organic chicken than a conventionally produced chicken.

Another problem with organic farming is that we don’t have the natural resources to run it on a large scale, and won’t have in the future. We know this because even 100 years ago we had to resort to collecting bird droppings off exotic islands just to get enough natural fertiliser for British farming. And even that wasn’t enough, so farmers started using man-made fertilisers. So changing to a purely organic approach would lead to a decrease in the amount of food produced in the world.

The organic movement claims to be more environmentally friendly than conventional farming. They argue that conventional farming uses man-made fertilisers which must be made using fossil fuels and this accelerates global warming. What they say is just a myth as we could make fertilisers using solar or wind energy.

It is often said that man-made chemicals cause health problems so we should restrict their use in farming. But there is no solid evidence for this. In fact, in the US, since farmers began using chemicals, cancer rates have dropped by 15% and life expectancy has gone up by around 10 years. Actually, it’s organic farming that threatens our health. Mother Nature isn’t our friend. Putting animal droppings on our food is clearly an unhealthy idea. Just look at the scare in 2006, when organically grown spinach was infected with E.Coli bacteria.

All of this shows that organic farming is not better than conventional farming.

Questions:

1. What is the conclusion of this argument?2. Identify two reasons given to support the conclusion. 3. Identify one counter-argument made in paragraphs 4-5. How effective is this counter-

argument and on what basis?4. How well does the reasoning in paragraph 5 support the conclusion? Make two points of

evaluation.5. Write your own argument (1 page) to support the argument that organic farming is better

than conventional farming (i.e. the opposite conclusion to that of the passage). You will need to do some research for in order to construct your reasoning.Please include a bibliography of websites/literature you used, and give a brief assessment of why you felt each one to be credible and reliable. Include the following in your argument (please write in the margin each element in the bracket below to show your thinking)Reasons (R)Evidence/examples for each reason (Ev) (Ex)Counter-argument (CA)Rejection of counter-argument, including evidence to the contrary (RCA)Conclusion (C)