Teaching CO300 Writing Arguments

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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 COCC300. The materials in this section include

• General strategies for critical reading
• Take-home Toulmin worksheet
• Dialogue with a text
• Definitions and purposes for critical thinking (Harper)
• Subjective and objective reasoning (Costello)
• Fallacies in logic
• Identifying logical fallacies (Becker)