Undergraduate - UnitATS1833 - Thinking: How to analyse arguments and improve your reasoning skills

This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2012 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

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6 points, SCA Band 1, 0.125 EFTSL

Refer to the specific census and withdrawal dates for the semester(s) in which this unit is offered, or view unit timetables.

Level	Undergraduate
Faculty	Faculty of Arts
Offered	Clayton First semester 2012 (Off-campus) Clayton Second semester 2012 (Off-campus) Clayton Summer semester A 2012 (Off-campus)
Coordinator(s)	Dr Monima Chadha

Notes

Previously coded PHL1030

Synopsis

Thinking is a set of skills. In this course we will focus on one family of this set: the skills involved in argument analysis. We will address the essential features of good arguments and how they can be articulated and represented. We will also examine the many ways in which reasoning can go wrong and how to avoid them. While we will focus on some of the theory of successful thinking, our main focus will be the practical techniques necessary for you to reason more effectively. Students taking this subject at 2-level will be assessed on their ability to identify arguments in more complex texts and will be expected to be able to evaluate a wider variety of argument types.

Outcomes

Students successfully completing this subject should:

have a theoretical understanding of what an argument is;
have developed the skills to extract the arguments from a variety of texts;
be able to identify and represent the structure of an argument;
understand the criteria of argument success and have the skills to apply those criteria to evaluate a variety of arguments;
have developed the skills to evaluate some common types of argument.