Critical Reading - Chapter 12

Chapter 12 : Identifying and Evaluation Arguments

1. Recognizing arguments as you read lets you critically examine an author’s line of reasoning.

2. Arguments always have the structure of at least one reason and one conclusion.

3. One way to detect them is to look for an author’s conclusion and then track the reason he or she used to reach them.

4. Another way is to look for the argument word clues an author uses to indicate when reasons are being presented and conclusion state.

5. When you find an argument, you should break it down into its constituent parts so that you can determine whether it is well founded and logical.

6. Argument can be evaluated using specific criteria including determining dependability, distinguishing fact from opinion, and detecting fallacies.

7. The two primary types of argument are deductive and inductive. Deductive arguments have at last one premise that logically leads to a conclusion. Inductive argument being with a series of specific observations and conclude with a generalization that logically flow from them.