Critical Thinking: Language & Thought

Course Goals

The secondary goal of the class is to practice skills of critical thinking. Being able to critically evalute ideas requires some fundamental skills. Among the skills we will be practicing in this class are:

• identify reasons and conclusions
• identify and evaluate assumptions
• identify and avoid biases
• interpret ideas
• judge credibility of ideas
• draw inferences
• test ones inferences and conclusions

Coursework

Discussion Questions. To facilitate discussions and encourage doing the readings on time, you will post TWO discussion questions inspired by the assigned reading and/or answers to other people's posted questions. The questions may range from somewhat "superficial" questions about the content of the reading to truly "deep" questions about the implications of the reading; integrating other sources from your own life, introspection, experiences; or plain speculation. These questions/answers should be posted by 9AM the day we are due to discuss the corresponding reading. There will be approximately 20 of these; 3 will be dropped. That means you can miss 3 discussion postings without affecting your grade.

Quizzes. On most class days, there will be a 1 pt multiple choice quiz covering the reading for that day. These quizzes are not meant to be tricky, just to make sure that you're learning the basics you'll need to participate in discussions and to get the most out of the course. There will be more than 15 of these quizzes, so that you can score more than 15 points total. As a result, you should not be penalized in your quiz score if you must miss a class. Anything above 15 points will count as extra credit toward your final grade.

Assignments. During the course of the class there will be four group assignments. The purpose of these assignments is to integrate or apply what we have discussed during the preceding section of the course. Before each of these assignments you will be given a series of questions to think about or exercises to complete in preparation for the group assignment to come. Your grade for these assignments will composed by the grade of your individual prep work and the evaluation of your group work as a whole.

Grading

Letter grades will be assigned as follows.

Policy information

Makeups

Remember that requests for assignments must be done by email, not in person before or after class. And if they are not turned in during class, they must be sent before class by email. This is so that we can keep records correctly.

Incompletes

Statement about disabilities

Schedule