in teaching argument for critical thinking and writing an introduction the author states

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Teaching students “how to write” can seem like a daunting task on top of teaching them course content. On the other hand, if you teach students how to argue , you can leverage writing to help students engage more deeply with course content. In Andrea Lunsford and John Ruszkiewicz’s widely-adopted textbook, Everything’s An Argument , they lay out perhaps the clearest definition of argument in the university setting we’ve seen, and it’s worth quoting in full:

…[A]n academic argument is simply one that is held to the standards of a professional field or discipline, such as psychology, engineering, political science, or English. It is an argument presented to knowledgeable people by writers who are striving to make an honest case that is based on the best information and research available, with all of its sources carefully documented. (15)

Thus, when you teach argument, you’re teaching students how to think, and how to communicate their thinking, about the course material—the “meat” of your field—while also teaching them how to write.

Arguments take a nearly endless variety of shapes, but every argument needs claims and evidence—whether explicit or implicit—in order to work. Many rhetoricians break down the building blocks even further, including reasons as well as evidence, while some consider reasons and evidence part of the same element.

Claims: What you are arguing. A thesis statement, then, is the main claim of an argument. All other claims used to build up to that main claim are supporting, or sub-claims.

Reasons: Why you are making the claims you’re making. You can see why some just break the elements in to claims and evidence; reasons, seen one way, are sub-claims.

Evidence: How you can support/prove your claims.

In this resource you will find information about the ways argument is typically used in academia, the most common types of claims arguments make, and strategies for teaching argument, approaching it from various angles appropriate across disciplines.

The terminology you will see in this resource may not align exactly with the terms in your discipline, but the strategies elaborated here are adaptable across fields.

General Considerations

Argument is both a process and a product.

People who write about argument (and teaching argument) imagine argument as two things:

a process of (the act of ) of inquiry, discovery, and/or truth-seeking, and
a product (an end result) —one that includes mature reasoning, understanding, persuasion, and/or communication.

Neither the process nor the product exists in a vacuum but instead responds to a specific rhetorical situation.

Effective arguments respond to their specific rhetorical situations.

In crafting any kind of argument, students need to understand their full rhetorical situation:

WHO they’re writing to (Who is their audience?),
WHO the stakeholders are (Who are all the parties for whom this argument matters?),
WHY they’re writing (their purpose),
WHAT their role is as the writer (Are they writing as students? Concerned citizens? Artists? Professionals? Something else?),
WHAT the context of their argument is, and
WHAT genres, mediums, and forms will best reach their ideal audience(s).

In other words, arguments are part of a larger conversation, whether in a field of study, a political arena, etc. Understanding the rhetorical situation necessitates identifying what conversation students want to enter. The “Classroom Strategies” section below has some ideas for how to help students understand and respond to rhetorical situations. [For an effective handout on the rhetorical situation, see Supplement 1: Rhetorical Situations.]

Arguments can lie on a spectrum from truth-seeking to persuasion, and in academic contexts, there is sometimes a distinction between “argument” and persuasion.

Much current thinking asserts that everything is , in some form or other, an argument. On the other hand, if you stop there, you’re guaranteed to confuse your students. An argument isn’t always a statement of “This is true, that’s not, and here’s why,” or “Do this thing if you want to be [happy/successful/elected/etc.].” One way to pull together the multiple ways of seeing the world around us as full of texts communicating arguments is to imagine a spectrum: At one end of the spectrum, an argument exists to change someone’s mind about something—to get them to think, feel, or do something as a result of engaging with an argument. At the other end is pure truth-seeking—an invitation to explore multiple aspects of an issue, looking for the best answer/solution/etc. Some uses for argument along the spectrum are: Truth-seeking, exploring, informing, decision-making, convincing,

Arguments can be implicit or explicit

Many humanities students think of argument in terms of the “traditional research paper,” in which a writer states her thesis, provides a series of clearly stated claims that add up to that thesis, and offers direct support for each claim along the way. (In some ways, this go-to structure is the result of the formulaic five-paragraph-essay approach.) Many students in STEM fields understand argument as taking the IMRAD (Introduction, Methods, Results, Analysis, Discussion) form. What most students—both in the humanities STEM fields, and the social sciences—often don’t realize is that arguments can take a multitude of other forms, including implicit forms such as personal narratives, songs, memes, open letters, charts and graphs, etc. It’s important to help students learn to identify the unspoken claims (and their underlying assumptions or warrants), reasons, and evidence in less explicit, less familiarly “argumentative” genres.

Explicit arguments can benefit from acknowledging and incorporating counterarguments.

A counterargument is a type of rebuttal. One way to build credibility in crafting persuasive arguments is to make use of possible counterarguments.

Rebuttals are your way of acknowledging and dealing with objections to your argument, and they can take two different forms:

Refutations: Refutations are an often more confrontational form of rebuttal that work by targeting the weaknesses in a possible objection to your argument. Think of refutations as the more sophisticated and mature older sibling of, “that’s not true!” Generally, they work by pointing out weaknesses with the solidity or rationale of the objection’s claim itself (what the objector says about the argument) or of its evidence (the support offered for the claim).
Counterarguments: Counterarguments are a more cooperative form of rebuttal . In counterarguments, a writer acknowledges the strengths or validity of someone else’s argument, but then makes a case for why their approach is still the best/most effective/most viable

Structurally, incorporating counterarguments can be done in a few ways: either you can include a paragraph or section that explicitly addresses possible counterarguments (see Classical and Rogerian structures below), you can include a counterargument and response with each claim, or you can even structure an entire argument as a rebuttal to someone else’s argument.

Students can strengthen their argumentative skills by reading and reverse-engineering model arguments effectively.

Because argument takes different forms and follows different conventions across curricula and disciplines, two skills you can teach your students that will transfer to any context are close reading and analyzing models. You can best help your students by exposing them to common genres in your field, helping them identify the goals, conventions, and modes of these genres. You can help them understand, in other words, how people in your discipline make arguments—what kinds of claims (explicit and/or implicit) your field values, what kinds of evidence counts as reliable, how arguments in the genres are organized, etc. You should show students how to read in your field, in other words, so that they can identify, and then emulate, the conventions of the field themselves. The “Classroom Strategies” section below has some ideas for how you can help students practice reverse-engineering.

Academics across curricula work with argument, but the genres, types, and purposes of argument vary according to discipline.

In the arts and humanities, argument tends to be “text-centered,” or based in what many know as close reading and/or theoretical analysis. Common genres under this mantle include literary and rhetorical criticism, comparison/contrast essays, interpretive thesis-driven essays, etc. Evaluative genres, such as performance, art, or music reviews, tend to be popular in the arts and humanities. Data-driven empirical arguments tend to show up more frequently in the social sciences and STEM fields. Some examples of common argumentative genres here include posters, lab reports, etc. Finally, decision-based arguments (closely related to, and often combined with, proposal arguments) show up in various contexts across the board, but are popular in fields like public policy, business, law, etc. Some examples are policy statements, business plans, position papers, etc.

Six Common Types of Claim*

The six most common types of claim are: fact, definition, value, cause, comparison, and policy . Being able to identify these types of claim in other people’s arguments can help students better craft their own. The types of claim can also be used to brainstorm possible arguments students might make about an issue they have decided to examine.

A claim of fact takes a position on questions like: What happened? Is it true? Does it exist? Example: “Though student demonstrations may be less evident than they were in the 1960s, students are more politically active than ever.”
A claim of definition takes a position on questions like: What is it? How should it be classified or interpreted? How does its usual meaning change in a particular context? Example: “By examining what it means to ‘network,’ it’s clear that social networking sites encourage not networking but something else entirely.”
A claim of value takes a position on questions like: Is it good or bad? Of what worth is it? Is it moral or immoral? Who thinks so? What do those people value? What values or criteria should I use to determine how good or bad? Example: “Video games are a valuable addition to modern education.”
A claim of cause takes a position on questions like: What caused it? Why did it happen? Where did it come from? What are the effects? What probably will be the results on a short-term and long-term basis? Example: “By seeking to replicate the experience of reading physical books, new hardware and software actually will lead to an appreciation of printed and bound texts for years to come.”
A claim of comparison takes a position on questions like: What can be learned by comparing one subject to another? What is the worth of one thing compared to another? How can we better understand one thing by looking at another? Example: “The varied policies of the US and British education systems reveal a difference in values.”
A claim of policy takes a position on questions like: What should we do? How should we act? What should be future policy? How can we solve this problem? What course of action should we pursue? Example: “Sex education should be part of the public school curriculum.”

The “Classroom Strategies” section below offers some ideas for how to help students imagine using different types of claims.

For a hard copy of the most common types of claim to provide your students, see Supplement 2: Six Common Types of Claim .

Common Argumentative Structures

Many arguments, particularly political and academic ones, draw on one or more of the three most common structures: Classical, Toulmin, and Rogerian. We mention these not so that you feel you need to master (or ask your students to master) the ins and outs of each, but rather because each of these offers recognizable patterns in wide use today.

Classical (derived from ancient Greek and Roman oratory practice): Arguments structured like classical orations are still widely common, particularly in academic essays, in part because a classical oration was designed to “win” a case. It was comprised of six different rhetorical moves, typically done in the same order, opening with an appeal to common interest and closing with an emotional flourish appealing to deeply held shared values or beliefs. The Latin terms for these moves aren’t important for the purposes of this resource, but their descendants still appear in many typical academic essays: Introduction (a hook, a stated claim), Background (context, stakeholders, etc.), Lines of Argument (sub-claims and supporting evidence), Alternative Arguments (counterarguments), and Conclusion. Teaching students about this structure and where it came from may help them move away from the five-paragraph theme, since the original six moves of classical oration are its ancestors.

Toulmin: The most commonly used argumentative structure—and the one we use in this resource—is the Toulmin structure (named after British philosopher Stephen Toulmin). It is a logical structure comprised of claims, reasons, and evidence. Toulmin argumentation also reminds us to pay attention to the underlying assumptions or premises for arguments, known as warrants, which may or may not be explicitly stated. Also, Toulmin argumentation encourages the use of qualifiers (such as “most,” “few,” “under these conditions,” “in general,” “some might argue,” etc.), which can make claims more precise.

Rogerian (derived from psychology): A Rogerian argumentative structure can provide a sense of collaboration and mutual respect. It takes its name from psychologist Carl Rogers, whose therapeutic approach urged people in conflict to attempt not just to tolerate one another’s perspectives, but to fully understand and respect them. This drew the attention of rhetoricians who were looking for a more balanced and considered form of argumentation that favored truth-seeking, rather than one intended simply to win. A Rogerian argument typically includes four parts: an introduction that includes the full argumentative landscape, with all positions fairly represented in such a way that the writer demonstrates understanding of and respect for the range of perspectives involved; a rehearsal of situations in which the writer can honestly concede that the opposing solutions or views might be preferable; the writer’s own position—including reasoning for why this position is valuable; and a discussion of this position’s value to all stakeholders, including opponents.

Strategies for the Classroom

Unpack the Rhetorical Situation. Often students think they understand the concept of the rhetorical situation, but when they encounter an argument “in the wild,” they lose site of it. Helping students unpack the specific rhetorical situations of arguments they encounter in your class moves them toward a deeper understanding of how they work—and thus helps them plan their own arguments. One strategy is to ask students to make notes for each argument they read in your class (whether in a journal, on a blog, etc.) that articulates the following:

Who is the author of the piece? What is their role? What stake do they have in making this argument?
What are they arguing? (Is this piece merely informative? Exploring new terrain? Truth-seeking? Aiming to convince? Proposing a solution to a problem? Etc.)
Who are they writing for? What stake(s) does their audience have in the conversation? Why does it matter?
What is the piece responding to? (What’s the larger conversation into which it enters?)

You might even consider beginning any discussion of a new piece—whether a lab report, policy proposal, theoretical analysis, review, etc.—with a report out of how people understood the rhetorical situation. Right away, then, your classroom conversation is focused on the larger conversation to which the work you’re studying responds.

Reverse Outline of 2-3 Models. We often tell students that one of their best strategies for understanding good writing is locating models of what people have done before. Even when we explicitly tell them to find models that they can use as guides, though, often the resulting papers are perplexingly unlike the models. This happens when students “look” at models but don’t see how they work . Creating a “reverse outline” helps students to understand the piece’s characteristics, structure, language conventions, etc. Here is a basic approach to creating a reverse outline:

Number each paragraph of the model source.
In a separate document, type the number of each paragraph, and then
Write a sentence that explains what that paragraph’s purpose is (for instance, “this paragraph is providing context for the author’s argument”) and paraphrase its main idea. Now, laid out in a document in front of you, you have the structure and main points of the model piece.
the kinds of language the piece uses (jargon? everyday speech?) and what the tone is like,
what types of claim(s) it makes (fact? definition? value? cause? comparison? policy?)
what kinds of evidence it employs (scholarly work? new media? interviews? anecdotes? Statistics? something else?),
how evidence is integrated (direct quotes? paraphrases? summaries? hyperlinks? graphs/charts?), and
how the evidence is applied (used as a model? used to establish context, fact, etc.? analyzed and taken further?)

Try Making Arguments with Different Kinds of Claims. As students are tasked with creating their own arguments, they are often uncertain of how to decide what to argue in the first place. One way for them to make decisions about the best approaches to take is to have them try to generate as many claims of each type (fact, definition, cause, value, comparison, policy) as they can for their chosen topic or issue. When they’ve generated claims, you can tell them to identify what reasons and evidence supports each claim. Taking a look at which types of claims they have been able to say the most about will provide an indication for students of a) what their most viable claims are, and b) what they already know (which they will be able to articulate in some fashion, even if it’s fairly rudimentary) and what they still need to find out in order to make their argument.

Role-Play: Entering the Conversation. Many times students feel they lack the authority to join a conversation about their subject. They tend to think, “What could I possibly have to add that these published writers haven’t already said?” (And of course they feel nervous: the imperative to contribute “new knowledge” can seem daunting to all of us, not just students!) Modernist scholar and rhetorician Mark Gaipa has laid out—in humorous and accessible form—several strategies for young scholars to use in his article “Breaking into the Conversation: How Students Can Acquire Authority for their Writing.” We recommend having your students read the article (bibliographic information below in “Further Reading”) along with a text or two that you’re discussing in class. Students will use Gaipa’s strategies to engage with these texts. For added learning power, tell them that other course readings/figures are fair game for incorporation into this activity. Here we’ve adapted his strategies into a classroom role-playing activity that both familiarizes students with the rhetorical moves he advocates while giving them practice brainstorming how to enact them.

Step 1. Break students into eight groups (one for each strategy):

Step 2. Privately assign each group a strategy to take on (so that the others don’t know which groups have been given which strategies).

Picking a fight,
Ass kissing,
Piggybacking,
Leapfrogging,
Playing peacemaker,
Acting paranoid,
Dropping out,
Crossbreeding the conversation with something new

Step 3. Give each group a few minutes to devise an approach to entering a conversation with the assigned course material using their assigned strategy.

Step 4. Instead of typical “reporting out” (going around the room and asking each group to describe what they came up with), ask each group to “perform” their approach. For example, they could write out exactly what someone would “say” (and who they would address), even employing tone of voice, in order to join the conversation using their strategy.

Step 5. The others in the room try to identify which strategy the group is enacting.

Step 6. As a class, discuss how their approach is likely to be received, and why. Are there slight alterations they might make to improve their chances of being accepted? Should they combine their strategy with another? Why? If there classmates had trouble identifying the strategy, why was that the case? Was there an element missing? The answers to these questions have everything to do with the specific rhetorical situation in your classroom and your field of study.

Choose a Structure. As we note in the General Considerations above, arguments take on a variety of forms, genres, and structures across disciplines and curricula. One way to help move students toward a draft, or even toward an outline, of an argument is to have them consider the common argumentative structures carefully and make a conscious decision about which one (or combination) best fits their rhetorical situation. For instance, you might have them sketch out what they would include for each element of a classical, Toulmin, or Rogerian argument about their topic, choose which one they think would be most effective, and make a case for why they’ve chosen that approach. Depending on what they choose, you can have a conversation about why different structures are more favorable in your field (though two different structures might work equally well just based on topic alone).

4.2 Understanding and Composing Researched Arguments

[1] features of academic argument.

A clear and arguable position: You must present a reasonable argument for which both evidence and opposing or alternate views (counterarguments) exist. If few would disagree with you or you cannot find any evidence of a credible opposing view, you should consider rethinking and revising your position. A common error occurs when students try to present a statement of fact as an argumentative position. See the example below to learn how an idea or statement of fact can be developed and revised to become an effective thesis statement.

Example: Can a statement of fact evolve into a strong argumentative thesis statement?

When presenting your stance in an argumentative thesis statement, make sure you have stated an argument and not a simple statement of fact or an expository thesis statement like you would write for a report.

Statement of Fact: Some social media users develop unhealthy attitudes about their body image because of the constant portrayal of “ideal” body types they encounter online.

Expository Thesis Statement: Excessive social media use can cause unhealthy physical and mental conditions, particularly for girls and young women.

Overarching Point Argumentative Thesis Statement: Social media users should restrict themselves from exposure to unrealistic photos and from the portrayal of the “ideal” body type in order to prevent the development of significant health issues.

Argument Thesis Statement with Broadcasting of Discussion Points (Reasons/Minor Premises): Social media users should restrict themselves from the exposure to unrealistic photos and from the portrayal of the “ideal” body type in order to prevent harmful physical and mental health conditions linked with excessive social media use.

Proposal Solution Argument Thesis Statement: To help users moderate their exposure to unrealistic photos and “ideal” body types associated with harmful physical and mental health conditions, social media companies should provide users with informative public service announcements focused on healthy body image, display advertising promoting healthy body images and attitudes, and develop filters and messaging preferences to help end-users control their media stream content.

THESIS TIPS: When you compare the statements above, it is clear that a solid expository or argumentative thesis statement can contain factual information, but it must be a more complex idea that requires more development and evidence. The simple statement of fact above does not pass the “so what?” or “why?” test. When a thesis makes a claim about what a person or organization should do, think, or say , you are in the realm of argument. A useful strategy for developing a strong argumentative thesis statement is to answer this question: Who should do what and why ?

Necessary background information: You must present the issues, history, or larger contexts that provide the foundation for understanding your argument so that your readers (and you) can comprehend and see the urgency in the specific argument you are making. That is, you must acknowledge the current rhetorical context and provide a sense of the argument’s importance or exigence.

Viable reasons for your position: Your argument offers valid reasons for your position for which you provide relevant evidence. These reasons usually become the key points expressed in the topic sentences of your body paragraphs.

Convincing evidence: You present convincing, credible, relevant researched evidence including facts, statistics, surveys, expert testimony, anecdotes, and textual (i.e. such as history, reports, analyses) evidence. Think about the appeals you learned about in Composition 1: logos, ethos, pathos, Kairos, and Stasis when selecting your evidence. Varying evidence types will help you vary the rhetorical appeals and create a more balanced argument and greater audience appeal.

Appeals to readers’ values: Effective arguments appeal to readers’ emotions, values, wants, and needs. You might appeal to your readers’ sense of compassion or justice through a compelling narrative/anecdote. However, you will want to make sure that you have a balance between appeals to your reader’s values and presenting sound evidence to support those appeals and keep your argument from being driven solely by appeals to pathos.

A trustworthy tone: Through a confident tone, clear focus, knowledgeable voice, and well-researched, credible evidence, you can develop readers’ confidence in your credibility conveying to them that you possess internal ethos. This means that vague or shallow evidence and writing that is unedited and/or too informal in tone will reduce your audience’s trust in your argument resulting in a smaller chance that your readers will seriously consider the ideas you are presenting as valid.

Careful consideration of counterarguments: You present your awareness of opposing views about your argument to address the audience’s needs or expectations and to reinforce your internal ethos. If you do not address the “yeah, but” or “what about” in your readers’ or listeners’ minds, your argument may not be taken seriously and, even worse, your audience will think you have not researched your topic well enough or that you underestimate their existing knowledge. You should concede some points the opposition makes and refute others through evidence when you can.

Appropriate use of patterns of development to present your argument: Your argument reflects the application of the most effective patterns of development or rhetorical modes which you learned about in Composition 1 (i.e. exemplification, explanation, analysis, classification, comparison/contrast, definition, description, narration), with which to develop the content supporting your reasons.

Activating an Inquiry-based Mindset for Creating Arguments

Using a questioning heuristic [3] can help you generate an academic argument. Just as you pre-research a possible argument topic to see what others are saying about it or just bubble map or list to generate some ideas or list some research questions, you also need to “interrogate” the argument you are forming before you go too far with your research. In fact, working through these questions about the argument will help you identify holes in the argument you can address with specific research questions for your next round of rhetorical research.

QUESTIONING HEURISTIC FOR INVENTING AN ARGUMENT [4]

Questions are at the core of arguments. What matters is not just that you believe that what you have to say is true, but that you give others viable reasons to believe it as well—and also show them that you have considered the issue from multiple angles. To do that, build your argument out of the answers to the five questions a rational reader will expect answers to. In academic and professional writing, we tend to build arguments from the answers to these main questions:

What do you want me to do or think?
Why should I do or think that?
How do I know that what you say is true?
Why should I accept the reasons that support your claim?
What about this other idea, fact, or consideration?
How should you present your argument?

When you ask people to do or think something they otherwise would not, they quite naturally want to know why they should do so. In fact, people tend to ask the same questions. As you make a reasonable argument, you anticipate and respond to readers’ questions with a particular part of the argument:

The answer to What do you want me to do or think? is your conclusion : “I conclude that you should do or think X.”
The answer to Why should I do or think that? states your premise : “You should do or think X because . . .”
The answer to How do I know that what you say is true? presents your support : “You can believe my reasons because they are supported by a thorough review of the available information and this carefully selected, credible evidence . . .”
The answer to Why should I accept that your reasons support your claim? states your general principle of reasoning, called a warrant : which is/are assumptions and/or values the author holds and possibly the audience holds as well: “My specific reason supports my specific claim because whenever this general condition is true, we can generally draw a conclusion like mine.” OR “I know people in my audience value the importance of X, just as I do.”
The answer to What about this other idea, fact, or conclusion? acknowledges that your readers might see things differently and then responds to their counterarguments .
The answer to How should you present your argument? leads to the point of view , organization , and tone that you should use when making your arguments.

As you have noticed, the answers to these questions involve knowing the particular vocabulary argumentation because these terms refer to specific parts of an argument. The remainder of this section will cover the terms referred to in the questions listed above as well as others that will help you better understand the building blocks of the argument.

Types of Arguments

Aristotelian argument.

Most likely sometime during your time in high school or your first semester of composition, you composed a simplified Aristotelian argument essay in which you researched a controversial issue and formed an argumentative position on the issue. You wrote an introduction leading into your thesis statement (major premise), provided two to three reasons as discussion points (minor premises) which became the focus of the essay’s body paragraphs. You also provided a counterargument presenting an opposing view and offered both a concession and refutation of that view.

Rogerian Argument

The Rogerian approach to argument is based on the work of Carl Rogers, one of the founders of Humanistic Psychology. Humanists are “concerned with the fullest growth of the individual in the areas of love, fulfillment, self-worth, and autonomy” [5] . In the field of learning and rhetoric, the “Rogerian” approach is focused on personal growth, developing a sense of personal fulfillment, and finding common ground with others. This concept of finding common ground with others who hold opposing views or perspectives is a contrast to the traditional Aristotelian argument as discussed above or the Toulmin argument which we will look at later.

A Rogerian argument presents the opposing view without bias or negative tone and finds subclaims or points within the opposition’s argument that have merit or align with your own position on the issue. If you understand the issue well enough and can authentically present two or more stances on the issue, you are demonstrating that you have brought an open mind to the issue and are trustworthy in presenting your own argument and the opposing view. That is, you will have validated your internal ethos to your audience. As you present the opposing argument and consider the supporting evidence, your goal is to work your way toward a common ground; that is, the reasons and/or evidence both sides can agree upon, at least to some degree. Even if you do not actually write or present a formal Rogerian Argument, working through an outline of the opposition’s case with an open mind for the purpose of finding common ground and determining where your arguments diverge will help you more effectively develop your own argument and present a counterargument that accurately represents the opposition’s views.

The Rogerian argument analysis expands your knowledge and understanding of an issue far beyond a simple pro/con understanding of the issue and can help you develop a more sophisticated, complex argument. Processing your argument through the filter of a Rogerian perspective could also help you avoid some argumentative pitfalls. For example, fully understanding and trying to find common ground with opposing views may help you prevent:

Taking too hostile a position against an opposing argument, thus alienating your audience.
Not acknowledging the values, wants, or needs the opposing argument fulfills for the members of your audience will result in you never addressing them yourself.
Writing a weak, uniformed counterargument to your own argument leading to audience mistrust of your internal ethos.

Toulmin Argument

The Toulmin Argument, which you studied in Composition 1, was developed by philosopher, Stephen Toulmin. Toulmin is best known for his work on argumentation which moved argument out of classical logical reasoning based on syllogisms to what he termed “practical arguments” based on justification rather than abstract proofs. Key elements of the Toulmin Model are claims, grounds or evidence, rebuttals, warrants, backing, and qualifiers. Below is a recap of the main components of the Toulmin Model.

TOULMIN MODEL [6]

THE CLAIM: The claim or thesis must be very clear and concise because it sets up the entire paper. Questions that a good claim might answer are:

THE EVIDENCE: The next part of our argument and the most in-depth is the evidence that supports our claim. We are basically saying in our argument that the reader should agree with us because of XYZ where XYZ is the evidence. It is often said that the heart of any argument is the evidence. The key is to use evidence that is accurate, current, fair, or unbiased which makes it credible to support the claim. Also, the evidence has to be presented accurately because the reader is simply not going to believe you unless you are some form of subject matter expert, which you probably are not, so we need to have the experts speak for you.

THE REBUTTAL: This section usually contains two parts: (1) addresses the main opposing point of view to the writer’s position. This demonstrates that you understand what that position is and helps develop your own credibility as the writer. (2) After you discuss the opposing view, next you provide evidence that casts doubt on that view suggesting that the other position might not be correct. The evidence does not have to prove that the other side is completely wrong; it only needs to suggest that there may be some doubt with the point of view based upon the evidence you are offering.

THE WARRANT: This is the basic/common or underlying principle that links your claim, reason, and evidence. For example, let’s say that your claim was about the dangers of social media use by young adults; however, everyone may not care about social media use. Therefore, you want to connect the reason “why” to the claim by expressing a common or underlying principle that will help your audience understand how the reason and claim link. So, while some people may not care about social media use, most people would care about keeping young adults safe and away from danger because that is a natural instinct embedded in the human psyche . Warrants can come from principles that are shared at the societal level or within the field itself.

THE QUALIFIERS: This term refers to language and its use in making your claim. They are words used to acknowledge the limits of your position and keep you from creating a claim that overreaches. Including words that accomplish a sufficiently narrow claim suggests that you know that there are other possibilities or contingencies. One of the best ways to get your readers to walk away from your argument is blind arrogance.

The diagram below reflects the elements of Toulmin’s practical argument. The diagram illustrates how warrants and the back of warrants provide the connection between evidence and a conclusion. Warrants help contextualize a fact or link a fact to a conclusion. Creating a diagram such as this will help you create a solid basis on which to justify your argument. Probably the most important elements of the Toulmin model are the warrant and the backing. If you are not sure what warrant/s (shared audience knowledge, values, or assumption/s) link your evidence (grounds for the argument) to the conclusion, you may not be supporting your conclusion with the most effective evidence.

Other Types of Academic Arguments

Sometimes writing instructors assign specific types of arguments. These genre arguments have different purposes and will require different writing strategies. These purposes and strategies require writers to assume different roles. If assigned one of these arguments, you may find yourself investigating a cause, defining a term, evaluating a product, or solving a problem. You’ll still be arguing and using rhetorical principles to make these arguments, but you’ll need to consider your role as you compose your argument.

Causal Arguments

In a causal argument, a writer must argue about a problem or controversy’s cause. Causal arguments are difficult because most controversial issues have complicated causes. Many people also tend to believe in causes that correspond to their political beliefs. Consider the various explanations for school shootings. Some will insist the problem is the easy availability of firearms while others will insist that shooters are inspired by violent video games and entertainment. When making a causal argument, a writer should consider their biases and rely on evidence to support their claims.

In a causal argument, writers may be tempted by logical fallacies. For example, it’s important to remember that correlation is not equal to causation . If two events happen at the same time, that doesn’t necessarily mean that one event caused the other.

Definition Arguments

This type of argument may seem puzzling. How do we argue about a word’s definition? Isn’t that what dictionaries are for? For most definition arguments, the real argument isn’t the precise meaning of the word. Instead, the argument is about the implications of that definition and how the definition may be applied to specific situations. Consider the word “obscene.” One dictionary defines “obscene” as “offensive or disgusting by accepted standards of morality and decency.” A writer may want to argue that Playboy is obscene. Or that a recent controversial film is obscene. By making this kind of argument, the writer would suggest some course of action: the obscene material should be age-limited, should be condemned, or should be banned. In this kind of paper, the author would make claims about “accepted standards” and “offensive or disgusting” as they apply to the potentially obscene item.

Many popular arguments rely on definitions. Determining whether something is obscene or offensive is just one popular item. As part of the War on Terror, we’ve argued about the meaning of “torture” and its justification. Many death penalty arguments rely upon the terms “cruel and unusual punishment.” The Iraq war inspired many arguments about “just” and “unjust” wars, as did the Vietnam war did decades earlier.

Evaluation Arguments

You may be more familiar with evaluation arguments than you realize. If you’ve ever read a movie, restaurant, or other product review, you’ve read an evaluation argument. As online shopping and social media have expanded, you may have even written your own evaluation argument on Amazon, Google, or Yelp. A good evaluation argument will rely upon clear criteria. “Criteria” (singular “criterion”) are the conditions by which you make your evaluation; these conditions could be used to evaluate any thing that is in the same category. A restaurant review may be based upon the food quality, price, service, and ambiance of the restaurant. An evaluation should also consider the specific category of what’s being evaluated: one shouldn’t evaluate a local pub with the same criteria as a fine dining establishment. By establishing a narrow category, the writer can write a more accurate evaluation. While reviews are the most popular form of evaluation arguments, that is not the only place they are used. Evaluation arguments are useful for supporting or opposing public policies or proposed laws. A community may propose several solutions to deal with a school district’s budget woes. A teacher from that district may write a guest editorial arguing for the best policy, or write an article criticizing a poor choice.

Proposal Argument (Problem/Solution)

Proposal arguments require the writer to perform two tasks: argue that there is a problem, and then propose a solution to that problem. Usually, the problem will be a local problem. It is good to focus on a smaller community because national or global problems or much more complex; therefore, making them harder to successfully argue in the limited space of a college essay.

Proposals have two separate arguments. The first is the problem: it’s not enough to label an issue a problem; a writer must prove that the problem is severe to an audience. Take, for instance, the opioid crisis. A writer may need to convince community members who aren’t addicts why the crisis is a problem for their community; therefore, it is not enough to discuss how addiction hurts addicts. Showing how the community is harmed by the crime associated with addiction would be a better way to motivate a community to solve the problem.

The second argument is the solution. Explain what the solution is and how it solves the problem. A writer should establish that their solution is the best solution. The best solution is the cheapest solution that best addresses the problem. “Cheapest” here refers to more than monetary costs. While monetary costs are oftentimes a considerable factor, there are other costs like labor and change that may affect people physically, mentally, or emotionally. “Addressing the problem” is an acknowledgment that most proposals won’t completely solve a problem. The goal is a reasonable solution that eliminates most of the harm, or the most serious harm, caused by the problem. Perhaps the most difficult aspect of proposals is considering the unintended consequences of a solution. These can be positive or negative. Writers should ask “What happens next?” of their solutions.

[8] Structuring Argument in Your Paper

Now that we have looked at the different terms and styles of arguments, we need to start thinking about how these things come together in a paper because writing academic research papers is (more than likely) going to be a lot messier than this chapter, or any textbook, makes it seem.

In a traditional argument-based paper, the claim is generally stated in the thesis (often at the end of the introduction), with the reasons appearing as the topic sentences of body paragraphs. The content of the body paragraphs is then focused on providing the evidence that supports the topic sentences, ultimately supporting the claim. Such organization helps to ensure that the argument is always at the forefront of the writing, since it provides guideposts in key places to direct the reader’s attention to what the author wants to persuade him/her of. There may be occasions, though, when it is preferable to delay stating the claim until later.

In addition, regardless of what the reasons are that you plan to use to support your claim, they will not be equal in their strength/ability to do so. Realistically, the reasons will fall along a spectrum from strongest to weakest (note that “weakest” does not carry the traditional connotation of the word “weak”), so, when writing an argument-based paper, you will need to determine the best order in which to place your reasons. The most common suggestion for ordering is to place your weakest reasons in the middle of the paper, with your strongest appearing at the beginning and end. This approach makes sense in terms of wanting to show the reader early in the writing that your claim is backed by sound reasoning and to leave him/her with a final impression that your argument is solid. You also should consider the complexity of the reasons; if some of your ideas are more complicated to understand than others, you will need to strike a balance between strength and complexity in the structure to ensure that your reader is not only persuaded throughout the paper but also that he/she can fully understand the logical progression from one point to the next.

organizing reasons effectively

Imagine that you are assigned an argument paper that must focus on an education-related issue, with the audience consisting of your peers. You select as your claim the idea that all undergraduate writing courses that fulfill a general education requirement should include a tutor, who would attend all class meetings and assist students as needed. As you plan your paper, you decide to use the following reasons to support your claim:

Students may be more comfortable seeking individualized help with their writing from a peer (advanced undergraduate student or graduate student) than their instructor.
The tutor could provide valuable feedback to the instructor to assist him/her with teaching that students may be uncomfortable sharing or otherwise unable to do so.
Student grades and retention would improve.

To support the first reason, your evidence consists of anecdotes from fellow students. To support the second and third reasons, your evidence consists of published research that suggests these benefits. In what order would you place the reasons in your paper, and why?

Media Attributions

“Toulmin argumentation can be diagrammed as a conclusion established, more or less, on the basis of a fact supported by a warrant (with backing), and a possible rebuttal.” Image by Chaswick Chap, CC-BY-SA 3.0 © Chap Chiswick is licensed under a CC BY (Attribution) license
4.2 (except where otherwise noted) is borrowed with minor edits and additions from Claim Your Voice in First Year Composition, Vol. 2 by Cynthia Kiefer and Serene Rock which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License ↵
Hillocks, G.,Jr. (2010). Teaching argument for critical thinking and writing: An introduction. English Journal, 99 (6), 24-32. https://www.proquest.com/docview/577286527/fulltextPDF/8F9B51E2B09B440EPQ/1?accountid=30550 ↵
Definition : of or constituting an educational method in which learning takes place through discoveries that result from investigations made by the student ↵
Borrowed with minor edits and additions from "Argument" by Kirsten DeVries which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License and published as part of Critical Reading, Critical Writing: A Handbook to Understanding College Composition, SP22 edition ↵
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Humanistic psychology. In Encyclopaedia Britannica . https://www.britannica.com/science/humanistic-psychology ↵
Borrowed with minor edits and additions from Writing and Rhetoric by Heather Hopkins Bowers, Anthony Ruggiero, and Jason Saphara which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ↵
Borrowed with minor edits and additions from "Argument Genres" by Heather Hopkins Bowers, Anthony Ruggiero, and Jason Saphara which was published in Writing and Rhetoric, Colorado State University, Pueblo and is licensed under CC-BY 4.0. ↵
The following section (except where otherwise noted) was borrowed with minor edits and additions from "Structure of Argument" by Karla Lyles and Jeanine Rauch provided by the University of Mississippi which is licensed under a CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike ↵

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EJ in Focus

Teaching Argument for

Critical Thinking and

Writing: An Introduction

Recently, a prominent group of

English educators claimed that the

“ultimate rationale for the teaching

of language arts” is “creating a just

society whose citizens are critically literate about

their world.” The writers further stated, “Literacy

education lies at the center of achieving our stated

goals of fostering critical thought, critical dialogue,

and a circumspect and vigilant American

citizenry . . . [and] has particular value and potential

in a culture increasingly unable to distinguish

fact from fiction, truth from lies” (Alsup et al.

279–81).

This is an important statement, I think,

and puts critical thinking in the forefront of what

we ought to be doing in the English education of

our students. However, while I believe many

hold this ideal in high regard (I can’t imagine

anyone debunking it!), there are few statements

in the secondary English education literature

that define what precisely we mean by critical

thinking.

What Textbooks Say about Critical

Thinking and Argument

When it comes to writing, the most advanced secondary

textbooks for English and most state rubrics

for judging writing do not deal with what is involved

in critical thinking in writing. Rather, they

opt for vague discussions of “persuasive writing.”

One significant text of over 1,100 pages devotes

only 45 pages to persuasive writing and only 1.5

George Hillocks Jr.

The University of Chicago

[email protected]

pages to “logical appeals” (Kinneavy), which are the

essence of argument. In a brief note intended to differentiate

between formal argument and persuasive

writing, the writer explains that “formal argument

[is] a line of reasoning that attempts to prove by

logic.” He does not explain what logic entails or

provide an explanation of how we might recognize

logic when we see it. Rather the text goes on to explain

that most examples of persuasive writing

“aren’t formal arguments. Their purpose is to persuade,

not to prove by logic. In a persuasive essay

you can select the most favorable evidence, appeal

to emotions, and use style to persuade your readers.

Your single purpose is to be convincing” (305). The

same might be said of propaganda and advertising.

In short, the volume virtually dismisses argument

entirely.

The page and a half that deals with “logical

appeals” tells students that “readers expect you to

have good reasons for your opinion.” Then, without

explaining the nature of a good reason, the

text goes on to state that “most people want more

than reasons: They want evidence or proof to back

up the reasons” (Kinneavy 302). The text goes on

to explain that evidence or proof consists of facts

or expert testimony and provides examples of

each. But it does not provide any explanation of

how either facts or expert testimony can become

proof of anything. For Kinneavy’s and other textbooks

that treat logic too simplistically, persuasive

writing is the only relevant thing to teach in

high school. Moreover, it is what is tested in the

state examinations. However, argument is at the

24 English Journal 99.6 (2010): 24–32

heart of critical thinking and academic discourse,

the kind of writing students need to know for

success in college.

What Students Need to Know

for Success in College

Those of us who know the needs of college writers

and who are familiar with the new ACT and SAT

writing samples know that persuasive writing

will not suffice. For college and career one needs

to know how to make an effective case, to make a

good argument. Gerald Graff was recently cited

in Education Week as giving the following advice

to college students: “Recognize that knowing a

lot of stuff won’t do you much good,” he wrote,

“unless you can do something with what you

know by turning it into an argument” (qtd. in

Viadaro).

In 2009, the National Governor’s Association

Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief

State School Officers put a document on the Internet

entitled College and Career Ready: Standards for

Reading, Writing, and Communication. It says this of

writing argument:

The ability to frame and defend an argument is

particularly important to students’ readiness for

college and careers. The goal of making an argument

is to convince an audience of the rightness

of the claims being made using logical reasoning

and relevant evidence. In some cases, a student

will make an argument to gain access to college

or to a job, laying out their qualifications or

experience. In college, a student might defend an

interpretation of a work of literature or of history

and, in the workplace, an employee might write

to recommend a course of action. Students must

frame the debate over a claim, presenting the evidence

for the argument and acknowledging and

addressing its limitations. This approach allows

readers to test the veracity of the claims being

made and the reasoning being offered in their

defense. (2B)

Calls for increased attention to logical thinking

and argumentation should be heard. Here I

provide information and an example from a real

classroom for teaching logical argument in a complex

and effective manner.

What Kind of Logic Can We Teach?

In this day of postmodernism and the widespread

notion among literacy scholars and certain philosophers

that we cannot know anything with certainty,

the question is this: What can count as logic

in arguments? If argument demands logic, and if

we are going to teach it, then we must have an

answer.

The kind of logic taught in schools since the

time of Aristotle and through the early 20th century

centers in the syllogism, thought to be the

most important, if not the only, path to truth (see

Aristotle, Prior). The syllogism derives a conclusion

from a set of statements called premises, which are

thought to be true and which have a common or

middle term in each. For example,

Major premise:

Minor premise:

Conclusion:

All men are mortal.

Socrates is a man.

Therefore, Socrates is

mortal.

In most disciplines (with the exceptions of

mathematics and sometimes physics) and in most

everyday problems and disputes, we do not have

premises that we know to be absolutely true. We

have to deal with statements that may be true or

that we believe are probably true—but not absolutely

true.

Aristotle, the chief inventor of the syllogism

whose works were used throughout the Middle

Ages and the Renaissance as the Bible of syllogistic

thinking, recognized that the syllogism was

not appropriate for the problems that he saw being

debated in the senate and elsewhere. These were

arguments of probability, arguments that were not

amenable to syllogistic reasoning. His response to

that problem was his Rhetoric, long recognized as

one of the most important texts in the field of

rhetoric. It deals with arguments of probability of

three kinds: forensic, epideictic, and deliberative,

or what I like to call arguments of fact, judgment,

and policy.

In the past two or three decades, colleges and

universities have turned to a newer treatment of arguments

of probability, that by Stephen E. Toulmin

in The Uses of Argument. Several popular college

English Journal

Teaching Argument for Critical Thinking and Writing: An Introduction

writing texts are based on the theories of Toulmin

and devote considerable space to the explication

and teaching of the methods involved (e.g., Lunsford

and Ruskiewiscz; Ramage, Bean, and Johnson; Williams

and Colomb).

Toulmin’s basic conception of argument includes

several elements: a claim based on evidence

of some sort, with a warrant that explains how the

evidence supports the claim, backing supporting

the warrants, qualifications, and rebuttals or

counterarguments that refute competing claims.

Figure 1 provides a representation of these elements

and their relationships.

Although many teachers begin to teach some

version of argument with the writing of a thesis

statement, in reality, good argument begins with

looking at the data that are likely to become the

evidence in an argument and that give rise to a

thesis statement or major claim. A thesis statement

arises from a question, which in turn rises

from the examination of information or data of

Figure 1. A Schematic Representation

of Toulmin’s Theory of Argument

Evidence

Warrant

Backing

Rules, laws, agreed-on

common sense, scientific

findings, and, particularly

in arguments of judgment,

definitions that are reached

through Socratic and

Aristotelian reasoning as

seen in US Supreme Court

discussions

Qualification

Claim

Rebuttals

G. Hillocks. Oct. 2009. Based on Stephen Toulmin. The Uses

of Argument. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1958.

some sort. This year, I had an opportunity to examine

a set of lesson plans that began the year

with the writing of thesis statements. There was

no mention of data of any kind. Apparently, students

were supposed to find problems somewhere

and make some claim about them. However, without

analysis of any data (verbal and nonverbal

texts, materials, surveys and samples), any thesis

is likely to be no more than a preconception or assumption

or clichéd popular belief that is unwarranted

and, at worst, totally indefensible. For that

reason, my students and I have approached the

teaching of argument from the examination of

data as a first step. We have tried to find data sets

that require some interpretation and give rise to

questions. When the data are curious, do not fit

preconceptions, they give rise to questions and

genuine thinking. Attempts to answer these questions

become hypotheses, possible future thesis

statements that we may eventually write about

after further investigation. That is to say, the process

of working through an argument is the process of inquiry.

At its beginning is the examination of data,

not the invention of a thesis statement in a

vacuum.

Once we have examined data to produce a

question and have reexamined the data to try to

produce an answer to the question, we may have a

claim or thesis worthy of arguing. Occasionally,

our readers or listeners are willing to accept data as

appropriate support for our answers to these questions,

but, more often, especially in serious arguments,

they will want explanations of why the data

we produce support the claims we make and are

trying to demonstrate. This is the job of the

warrant.

Warrants

Warrants may be simply commonsense rules that

people accept as generally true, laws, scientific principles

or studies, and thoughtfully argued definitions.

In contemporary crime scene investigation

programs on TV, considerable time is devoted to

establishing warrants. Most viewers of such programs

are likely to be fully aware, for example, that

fingerprints at a crime scene may lead to an arrest of

the person to whom those prints belong because

any given person’s prints are unique, and therefore

indicate the presence of that person at the scene.

26 July 2010

Similarly, we also know that pistols and rifles leave

distinctive markings on bullets fired from them.

Thus, a bullet found in a victim or at a crime scene

may become the evidence that links a gun owner to

the shooting of the gun and the commission of the

related crime. The prints and the markings on bullets

are the evidence that indicate the identity of

perpetrators by way of warrants concerning their

uniqueness.

Anyone familiar with these programs also knows

that the warrants may be challenged. In Toulmin’s

terms, the backing is the support for the warrants.

In the case of fingerprints and ballistics, there have

been many studies that can be cited in the support

of the warrants as to the uniqueness of fingerprints

and bullet markings. However, in the TV shows

themselves, sometimes considerable time is devoted

to developing the backing for warrants. One frequently

visited kind of backing in one program has

to do with the development of studies of the development

of beetles in corpses as the backing for warrants

for assertions or claims concerning the length

of time a corpse has been dead. Sometimes we see

the criminalist studying the development of beetles

from larva to adult to establish a time-line for the

development of the insect through its various

stages. This study will be the backing for the warrant

for claims about how long a corpse has been

deceased.

In more complex arguments of judgment and

policy, the most crucial arguments pertain to the

warrants and their backing. Platonic dialogues

often deal with the backing for warrants. For example,

in the Euthyphro, Socrates questions Euthyphro

concerning his claim that he is justified in

prosecuting his father for the death of a slave. The

U.S. Supreme Court’s discussions of cases are debates

about the warrants used in lower court cases

that have been appealed. In Scott v. Harris, for example,

the argument concerns whether a police officer

may use lethal force to stop a driver doing on

average 90 mph on a two-lane road and crossing

the double yellow line even in the face of oncoming

traffic. Harris claimed that the officer’s ramming

of his car was a violation of his Fourth

Amendment right protecting him against unjust

seizure.

Qualifications and Counterarguments

In addition, because these are arguments of probability,

two other elements are necessary: qualifications

and counterarguments. Simply because we are

dealing with statements that cannot be demonstrated

to be absolutely true, qualifications are necessary

in stating both claims and warrants. For

claims, I like to encourage the use of words such as

probably, very likely, almost certainly, and so forth.

Some instructors refer to these as hedge terms. But

they are not.

The idea that we are dealing with arguments

of probability suggests that differing claims are

likely to exist. For example, for over a hundred

years, available evidence has shown that the teaching

of traditional school grammar does not contribute

to increasing the quality of student writing (see

Braddock, Lloyd-Jones, and Schoer; Graham and

Perin; Hillocks, “What Works”). Despite what I regard

as massive evidence, many teachers and writers

continue to argue for the teaching of traditional

school grammar, the teaching of the parts of speech,

parts of sentences, and concepts of grammar such as

gerunds, appositives, and introductory adverbial

clauses through the exercises presented in grammar

books such as Kinneavy’s. If I wished to make an

argument as to the folly of teaching grammar again,

I might have to make a counterargument to their

position.

Teaching the Basic Elements

of Argument (Arguments of Fact):

A Classroom Example

All of this has been discursive and what I call presentational

(Hillocks, “What Works”) and declarative

(Hillocks, Ways of Thinking). Students at the

high school level and even above are unlikely to

learn anything from such a method. Perhaps they

will learn the terms, but I am quite certain they will

not learn to develop strong arguments on their own.

To learn that, they will have to become engaged in a

highly interesting activity that is both simple and

challenging, for which feedback is immediate and

clear, that allows for success and inspires further effort,

what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls the flow

experience.

For over 30 years, my students and I have

been working on the development of such activities

for teaching argument and other important aspects

of English as well. We have often used the following

problem to introduce forensic argument to Chicago

high school students. Recently, I used it with

a class of 30 ninth graders, six of whom had been

labeled as learning disabled. Of the 30, 21 were

Latino/Latina, four were African American, and

four were white, one of whom had Polish as a first

language, and one was Asian with Mandarin as a

first language. It was a new class for me, which I

had borrowed for seven weeks to try lessons and to

collect writing samples.

For the first day of talk with the students, I

distribute what might be called the crime scene

picture (Treat). It is a line drawing of a woman

dressed in a formal gown looking down at a man

lying at the foot of the stairs, face up, his right foot

resting on the third step of the staircase, a glass

held in his left hand between his forefinger and

thumb. He is nattily dressed in tuxedo trousers, a

smoking jacket, a dress shirt, and a bow tie. His

clothing is quite neat. Had he been coming down

the stairs, the banister would have been on his left.

The candelabras and mirror opposite the banister

are undisturbed.

I say, “We are going to be the investigators

who try to determine what really happened at this

crime scene.”

I read a passage entitled “Slip or Trip” to the

students as they examine the picture. (I notice that

it has immediately captured their interest. They are

scrutinizing it.) The passage tells us that Queenie,

the woman in the gown, had gone to the country

club after a fight with her husband, Arthur, the

man on the floor. She left the club shortly before

one in the morning and invited a few friends to follow

her home and have one more drink. They got to

the Volupides’ house about ten minutes after

Queenie, who met them at the door and said,

“Something terrible happened. Arthur slipped and

fell on the stairs. He was coming down for another

drink—he still had the glass in his hand—and I

think he’s dead. Oh, my God—what shall I do?”

The autopsy concluded that Arthur had died from a

wound on the head and confirmed the fact that he’d

been drunk.

I say, “I want you to assume that you are on

the scene to try to determine what happened. Our

first question should be, ‘Can we believe what

Queenie says?’ Most of you have learned, from

watching various crime shows, that witnesses are

not always reliable. What do you think? Is what

you see in the picture consistent with what

Queenie says? If you have any ideas, raise your

hand.”

There is a rustling of paper and squeaking of

chairs as students bend over their copies of the

picture. I wait. I have the overhead on with a

transparency divided in two columns. The left column

is labeled Evidence and the right, Rule. Some

of the kids are whispering to each other, but I can

tell it is about the picture because they are pointing

to it. After no more than 10 to 15 seconds,

Marisol has her hand in the air. I wait for a few

more seconds. Soon Jorge and William have their

hands in the air as well. Then Isobel, and Lucita. I

call on Marisol.

“He’s still got the glass in his hand. I mean, if

you fell, you would drop the glass, wouldn’t you?”

I say, “Well, I’m not sure. What do the rest of

you think?”

Jorge does not wait to be called on. “Yeah,

you drop stuff when you fall, except, maybe like a

football when you get tackled.”

Dantonio responds, “Yeah, but that a special

thing. You drop the ball, everybody hate you. But

the glass ain’t important. You drop the glass to save

you ass.” The class laughs. I decide to let it go.

Dantonio is supposed to be learning disabled, and I

am pleased to have him contribute. Besides, I had

already laughed involuntarily. (It is interesting to

note that this young man, through my seven weeks,

is one of the strongest students in the class. So much

for school labels.)

Isobel responds to that, “It depends on what

you’re carryin’. I was carryin’ my baby sister once,

and I tripped, but I di’n’t drop her. I tried to keep

her from hittin’ the floor.”

Dantonio says, “That what I sayin’. It depend

on how important what you carryin’.”

“OK,” I say. “How many of you think that the

fact that Arthur still has a glass in his hand is important

evidence?” I pause to look around the room.

Nearly all hands are up. I write in the left-hand column,

under Evidence, “Arthur still has a glass in his

“Now,” I say, “let’s see why that is important.

Can someone explain why that is important?”

28 July 2010

Almost immediately, Marisol’s hand is up. I

point to her. “It’s important because if you fall down

stairs and die, you’re gonna drop the glass. That’s

obvious.” Under Rule, I write Marisol’s response.

“Do we only drop glasses?” I ask. “Or does it

apply to other things?”

Dantonio does not wait again. “If it be important,

you hold on, like a football. But if it ain’t

nothin’, you probably drop it to save you self.”

“Does everyone agree with that?” I ask. Most

heads are nodding in agreement. “Let’s see if we can

make that into a general rule. We can work with

what Marisol said earlier and with what Dantonio

just said. Take a minute to think about how to say it

and write down a version of the rule.” I look around

the room. Some students are trying to write something.

Some are looking puzzled. A few are staring

off into space, perhaps thinking, perhaps not. I wait

several more seconds. “Try to write something,” I

say. Several students begin to write. I walk about the

room encouraging everyone to write something. I

tell Dantonio to use what he just said to the class. I

suggest that Maria begin with the word when to

write a sentence explaining what happens when people

fall down the stairs. Most students are writing a

sentence or two. But nearly all of them are using

second person, just as they had in the preceding discussion.

I will try to explain how to make the rule

third person so that it is more general than what

happens to a you. I call for volunteers. Barbara raises

her hand. “When you fall down the stairs, you drop

what you’re carrying unless it’s really important.”

“Very good,” I say and write Barbara’s sentence

on the overhead. I call for other sentences and

students read several aloud, all more or less like

Barbara’s. I write another two on the overhead. “Let

me summarize what we know so far. Arthur still

has a glass in his hand. We know that when people

fall down the stairs, they probably drop what they

are carrying to save themselves. What can we conclude

from that?” Students are silent. I wonder if

they know what I mean by conclude. I try again.

“What do you make of Queenie’s story now?”

Marisol has her hand up along with about five

other students. I call on Victoria. “I think she’s

lying.”

“What do the rest of you think?”

Dantonio says, “Yeah, she lyin’—probably.”

“Why did you add probably?”

Thompson-McClellan Photography

“’Cause we don’t know for sure. But it sure

look like she lyin’.”

I say to the class, “That’s a very important point.

The arguments we will be talking about are all arguments

of probability. That simply means that we can

be only fairly certain of our claims. That is why we

call such statements claims—because we are claiming

they are true.” I am aware that this point will have to

come up many times for it to be clear. But Dantonio

has put the class on the road to understanding. I decide

to go back to the statements of warrants.

“Let’s look again at these sentences from Marisol,

Gladys, and Roberto.” I point to the sentences

on the overhead. “These sentences are important

because they explain the evidence and show how it

supports our claim that Queenie is probably lying.

In writing them there are a couple of things I would

like you to do. First, if I say you, to whom does that

apply? About whom am I speaking?”

Roscoe, an African American boy, raises his

hand. “You talking to us.”

“Right. Now does this general rule apply

only to people in this room?” There is a chorus of

“No.”

“So, how can we make it more general?” I ask.

My question is met with silence. I decide not to

play guessing games, but just then, Marisol raises

her hand. I nod to her.

“You could say, like, um, like we already did,

‘When people fall down stairs, they probably drop

what they’re carrying if it’s not important.’”

“Good,” I say. “That makes the statement a

little bit more formal and more generally applicable.

Now I want to suggest another way to indicate

that this is probably the case. What you have stated

in that sentence is a general rule that most of us

agree with. Right? So we can say that. ‘As a rule,

when people fall down stairs, they drop what they

are carrying to save themselves.’” I write that sentence

on the overhead opposite “Arthur still has a

glass in his hand.”

“I would like us to refer to statements like this

as rules or general rules.” I underline the label, Rule,

of the right-hand column on the overhead. “Now,

who can put this whole argument together?” Several

hands go up. Roberto looks as though he is going to

fall out of his seat in his eagerness. I call on him.

“Um, Arthur still has a glass in his hand. As a

rule, when people fall down stairs, they drop what

they are carrying to save themselves. So I think

Queenie is probably lying about him falling down

the stairs.” On a clean overhead transparency, I write

what Roberto has said, each sentence on a separate

line. “Good,” I say. “What we have here are four basic

parts of a simple argument.” I label the sentences

Evidence, Rule, and Claim; I underline Probably and

beneath the line I write Probably = Qualification.

As we continue to discuss the picture, students

note several other details and think through

the warrants that make them evidence: The glass is

in Arthur’s left hand (But when people come down

the stairs drunk, they are likely to hold on to a banister,

which would have been on his left); Arthur’s

clothing is very neat (When people fall down the

stairs, their clothes “get messed up”); the glass is

still in his hand, even though he is dead (When

people die, their muscles relax and anything they

are holding will slip from their hands); Arthur is

lying face up (As a rule, when people fall down

stairs, they are likely to land on the chest, face

down, not on their backs); the fixtures on the wall

opposite the banister are undisturbed (When people

are falling, they tend to reach out for anything

to keep themselves steady); Arthur’s forefinger is

inside the glass (Generally, when people intend to

get another drink, they are unlikely to place their

fingers in the glass they are using). Discussing these

details and developing the warrants usually takes

the remainder of the class period.

Once we have completed these discussions,

we turn to writing a report that will include the

full argument. I begin by asking students, “If you

were really an investigative team and if this were a

real crime, to whom would you have to write a report?”

Students suggest the boss, the Chief Inspector,

the District Attorney, or the Chief of Police.

We usually settle on the Chief of Police or the District

Attorney. I ask, “What would we need to explain

to that audience?” I make a list of their

suggestions on the overhead. If they miss any of the

following, I ask a direct question, e.g., “Should we

explain when we arrived on the scene?” Here is

what this class listed:

When we arrived.

What we found.

What Queenie said.

What the autopsy found.

Does the evidence support what Queenie

said?

Our conclusion and/or recommendation.

Explanation of evidence supporting our conclusion

and recommendation.

Next, I begin to write what students dictate

on the overhead. Ordinarily, this involves asking a

lot of questions to help students clarify their thinking

and organize it. But once we have the outline

above, organization of the major sections is not a

problem. We begin with when we arrived on the

scene. I simply ask, “When did we arrive?” In this

class, students produced the following:

We arrived at the home of Arthur and Queenie

Volupides at about 2:15 AM. on the night of February

6, 2007.

I encourage students to be specific about the scene,

asking questions to produce more specific details.

Students tend to begin with general statements

that have to be specified. For example, the first response

to “What did we find?” was simply, “We

found Arthur dead on the floor.” Through a few

questions, we finally arrived at the following:

We found Arthur Volupides lying at the bottom

of the main stairs on his back, face up, his feet on

the third step and still holding a glass in the finger

tips of his left hand. His clothes were neat. Nothing

on the wall beside the stairs is disturbed. The

30 July 2010

carpet where he lay was undisturbed. Queenie said

that Arthur slipped and fell on the stairs. He was

coming down for another drink. He still had the

glass in his hand.

The next problem is to present our thinking about

the situation. Students, by this time, have given

up any claims that Queenie is telling the truth. A

few questions bring us to sentences such as the

following:

We believe that Queenie is not telling the truth.

The evidence does not support what she says

happened.

At this point, since students have worked

through all the evidence pretty thoroughly, I ask

them individually to write out the evidence and the

rules (warrants) that allow them to interpret the

evidence. I ask that they include at least five pieces

of evidence, each with an appropriate warrant and

any necessary explanation. Here is the presentation

of evidence from Marisol’s paper. She begins her

claim immediately after quoting Queenie:

However, we believe that the evidence does not

support her claim. First, the cup is in his hand.

When people fall down the stairs, they let go of

what they are holding to try and get a grip of something

to stop. Second, the way Arthur is facing is

weird. When someone falls down the stairs, their

body would be face down. Arthur, though, is faced

upwards. Third, she waited to long to call the

police or ambulance. She waited for her friends to

do anything. When someone sees another person

hurt they automatically call the police for help.

The last reason I believe she is lying is because

the things on the wall are all straight. They seem

like if they hadn’t been disturb. If someone falls

down the stairs, they will try to hold on to anything.

Especially if they you see things in the wall

you will try to brake your fall.

Marisol has Spanish as a first language. She makes

several errors in this passage, but her basic grasp of

the syntax of argument is sound. She simply needs

to learn the punctuation of introductory adverbial

clauses. But she is using them appropriately. Note

also that she slips from third person to second in

her final warrant. She needs to learn to proofread for

spelling, unnecessary words, and other minor prob-

lems. But this essay, written with a good deal of

support, makes me happy as the teacher after only

four days of instruction. For detail about this teaching

and what follows, see my Teaching Argument:

Critical Thinking for Reading and Writing.

Worth the Effort

This has been only a brief introduction to the teaching

of argument using a system of logic that is

widely accepted in colleges and universities. An effective

curriculum for teaching argument would

include attention to arguments of judgment in

which warrants and their backing become far more

important and complex and arguments of policy

that will include both arguments of fact and arguments

of judgment. Doing all of this takes time.

But it is well worth the time and effort.

Works Cited

Alsup, Janet, Janet Emig, Gordon Pradl, Robert Tremmel,

and Robert P. Yagelski with Lynn Alvine, Gina

deBlase, Michael Moore, Robert Petrone, and Mary

Sawyer. “The State of English Education and a Vision

for Its Future: A Call to Arms.” English Education

38.4 (2006): 278–94. Print.

Aristotle. The Art of Rhetoric. Trans. Hugh Lawson-Tancred.

New York: Penguin, 1992. Print.

———. Prior Analytics. Trans. A. J. Jenkinson. @Adelaide,

2007. Web. 5 Apr. 2010. .

Braddock, Richard, Richard Lloyd-Jones, and Lowell

Schoer. Research in Written Composition. Urbana:

NCTE, 1963.

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal

Experience. New York: Harper, 1990. Print.

Graham, Steve, and Dolores Perin. Writing Next: Effective

Strategies to Improve Writing of Adolescents in Middle and

High Schools—A Report to Carnegie Corporation of New

York. Washington: Alliance for Excellent Education,

2007. Print.

Hillocks, George, Jr. Teaching Argument: Critical Thinking

for Reading and Writing. Portsmouth: Heinemann, in

press.

———. Ways of Thinking, Ways of Teaching. New York:

Teachers College, 1999. Print.

———. “What Works in Teaching Composition: A Metaanalysis

of Experimental Treatment Studies.” American

Journal of Education 93.1 (1984): 133–70.

Print.

Kinneavy, James. Elements of Writing: Complete Fifth Course.

Austin: Holt, 1993. Print.

Lunsford, Andrea A., and John Ruskiewiscz. Everything’s an

Argument. New York: Bedford, 2001. Print.

National Governor’s Association Center for Best Practices

and the Council of Chief State School Officers. College

and Career Ready: Standards for Reading, Writing, and

Communication. 2009. Web. 5 Apr. 2010. .

Oyez Project, Scott v. Harris, 550 U.S. 2007. Case 05-1631.

Web. 5 Apr. 2010. .

Plato. Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo. Trans. H. N.

Fowler. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge: Harvard

UP, 1999. Print.

Ramage, John D., John C. Bean, and June Johnson. Writing

Arguments: A Rhetoric with Readings. New York: Pearson,

Toulmin, Stephen E. The Uses of Argument. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1958. Print.

Treat, Lawrence. Crime and Puzzlement: 24 Solve-Them-

Yourself Picture Mysteries. Illus. Leslie Cabarga. Jaffrey,

NH: David R. Godine, 1982. Print.

Viadero, Debra. “Researchers Try to Promote Students’

Ability to Argue.” Education Week 29.3 (2009):

14–15. Web. 5 Apr. 2010. .

Williams, Joseph M., and Gregory G. Colomb. The Craft of

Argument. New York: Pearson, 2007. Print.

George Hillocks Jr. is professor emeritus at the University of Chicago in the Departments of Education and English Language

and Literature. He is a recipient of NCTE’s Russell, Meade, and Distinguished Service Awards. He is a member of the National

Academy of Education and a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association. He is author of several books and

many articles. His most recent book is Narrative Writing: Learning a New Model for Teaching, which won the Meade award

in 2008. His current research is an exploration of the impact of classroom activities on student achievement in writing. He

enjoys working with teachers, English departments, and school districts on assessment and curriculum development especially

in writing and literature. He may be reached at [email protected].

READWRITETHINK CONNECTION

Lisa Storm Fink, RWT

In “Analyzing Symbolism, Plot, and Theme in Death and the Miser,” students apply analytical skills to an exploration

of the early Renaissance painting Death and the Miser by Hieronymous Bosch—similar to the crime scene

photo used in the article. Students sketch and label the painting, use an interactive tool to explore its elements,

apply literary analysis tools to their interpretation, predict the painting’s plot, and conclude the unit by creating a

project that identifies and explains their interpretation of the painting. http://www.readwritethink.org/classroomresources/lesson-plans/analyzing-symbolism-plot-theme-833.html

On his arm he’s drawing two snakes;

his fingers are busy and green.

His beautiful eyes are great salt lakes

and his mind is a submarine.

His fingers are busy and green

and I ask for his homework in vain.

This boy’s mind is a submarine

and his book was left out in the rain.

I ask for his homework in vain.

His sister ran off last night

He says there was some kind of fight.

Trying to Teach Travis

His sister ran off last night.

He’s pouring a puddle of glue.

He says there was some kind of fight

but the things that were shouted aren’t true.

and the things that were shouted aren’t true.

On his arm he’s drawing two snakes.

—Ginny Lowe Connors

An English teacher in West Hartford, Connecticut, and executive board member of the Connecticut Poetry Society, Ginny

Lowe Connors was named Poet of the Year by the New England Association of Teachers of English in 2003. She is the

author of the poetry collection Barbarians in the Kitchen and has edited three poetry collections: Essential Love, To Love

One Another, and Proposing on the Brooklyn Bridge.

32 July 2010

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The Case of a Science Journalism Writing Project - National Council ...

EJ in Focus Teaching Argument for Critical Thinking and Writing: An Introduction Recently, a prominent group of English educators claimed that the “ultimate rationale for the teaching of language arts” is “creating a just society whose citizens are critically literate about their world.” The writers further stated, “Literacy education lies at the center of achieving our stated goals of fostering critical thought, critical dialogue, and a circumspect and vigilant American citizenry . . . [and] has particular value and potential in a culture increasingly unable to distinguish fact from fiction, truth from lies” (Alsup et al. 279–81). This is an important statement, I think, and puts critical thinking in the forefront of what we ought to be doing in the English education of our students. However, while I believe many hold this ideal in high regard (I can’t imagine anyone debunking it!), there are few statements in the secondary English education literature that define what precisely we mean by critical thinking. What Textbooks Say about Critical Thinking and Argument When it comes to writing, the most advanced secondary textbooks for English and most state rubrics for judging writing do not deal with what is involved in critical thinking in writing. Rather, they opt for vague discussions of “persuasive writing.” One significant text of over 1,100 pages devotes only 45 pages to persuasive writing and only 1.5 George Hillocks Jr. The University of Chicago [email protected] pages to “logical appeals” (Kinneavy), which are the essence of argument. In a brief note intended to differentiate between formal argument and persuasive writing, the writer explains that “formal argument [is] a line of reasoning that attempts to prove by logic.” He does not explain what logic entails or provide an explanation of how we might recognize logic when we see it. Rather the text goes on to explain that most examples of persuasive writing “aren’t formal arguments. Their purpose is to persuade, not to prove by logic. In a persuasive essay you can select the most favorable evidence, appeal to emotions, and use style to persuade your readers. Your single purpose is to be convincing” (305). The same might be said of propaganda and advertising. In short, the volume virtually dismisses argument entirely. The page and a half that deals with “logical appeals” tells students that “readers expect you to have good reasons for your opinion.” Then, without explaining the nature of a good reason, the text goes on to state that “most people want more than reasons: They want evidence or proof to back up the reasons” (Kinneavy 302). The text goes on to explain that evidence or proof consists of facts or expert testimony and provides examples of each. But it does not provide any explanation of how either facts or expert testimony can become proof of anything. For Kinneavy’s and other textbooks that treat logic too simplistically, persuasive writing is the only relevant thing to teach in high school. Moreover, it is what is tested in the state examinations. However, argument is at the 24 English Journal 99.6 (2010): 24–32

Page 2 and 3: George Hillocks Jr. heart of critic
Page 4 and 5: George Hillocks Jr. Similarly, we a
Page 6 and 7: George Hillocks Jr. Almost immediat
Page 8 and 9: George Hillocks Jr. carpet where he

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15.11.1: How Arguments Work and the Argumentative Writing and Critical Thinking Course Objectives

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California C-ID English 105 is the outline for one of our most commonly taught courses, variously referred to as Argumentative Writing and Critical Thinking, Advanced Composition, Argumentation, Rhetoric in College, or Writing about Nonfiction. The C-ID ENGL 105 Descriptor explains, "This course offers instruction in argumentation and critical writing, critical thinking, analytical evaluation of primarily non-fiction texts, research strategies, information literacy, and documentation."

Attributions

By Allison Murray and Anna Mills, licensed CC BY NC 4.0 .

Arguments in Context

Thaddeus Robinson, Muhlenberg College

Publisher: Muhlenberg College

Language: English

Formats Available

Conditions of use.

Learn more about reviews.

Reviewed by Sarah Lonelodge, Assistant Professor of English/Writing Program Director, Eastern New Mexico University on 12/19/23

Comprehensiveness rating: 4 see less

Robinson presents a very comprehensive text focused on critical thinking and the analysis and evaluation of arguments. Numerous forms of argument are presented, and the author offers useful tools that students will be able to apply. The text does not offer students explicit instruction in creating or writing arguments, but this goal is not mentioned as one of the aims of the text. However, it is clear that students would be able to develop thoughtful arguments after reading and interacting with this text. While an index/glossary is not provided, the author presents a summary and key terms in a summary portion for each section.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

The content looks accurate and unbiased to me. Robinson provides a thorough discussion of various methods and possibilities for argument identification, analysis, and evaluation. The examples employed throughout the chapters tend to be based on very neutral situations.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 4

Because the text is focused on critical thinking, I do not see it becoming obsolete any time soon. Perhaps a few of the examples will eventually need updates, but most are fairly timeless. Robinson also presents an effective discussion of media literacy with social media and web-based arguments. Again, this presentation is effective; however, the growth of social media and the expansion of platforms and apps will require updates in the near future to maintain relevance.

Clarity rating: 4

The content of the book is clear and well organized; however, some terminology may be difficult for some students to grasp easily. Depending on the level of student who is using this text, the language may not be an issue. For first- or second-year students, the style and word choice may cause some frustration or may require the use of a dictionary.

Consistency rating: 5

The book is very consistent in its use of language, examples, etc., and its organization/framework is easy to navigate. From chapter to chapter, students will know what to expect.

Modularity rating: 5

I think the book is well modulated. Robinson has created seven distinct units or sections, and each of them have 3-5 chapters of relatively similar length. The length may feel a bit long for some readers, but this determination will depend on the level of student assigned this text.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

Each unit/section is well organized into a text overall and would flow well from one concept to the next. Within each unit/section, the chapters follow a similarly effective organization pattern. I particularly appreciate the summaries at the end of each unit/section as these additions would likely offer students a clear picture of the outcomes of what they read.

Interface rating: 5

I don't see any interface or navigation issues. The display is well organized and easy to follow and read.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

I didn't notice any grammatical issues.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

I did not notice any culturally insensitive or offensive content. The few images used were neutral and typically more decorative than content specific. The examples utilized through the book were based on concepts that are unlikely to offend anyone, such as a sibling borrowing a vehicle, sports, calculating GPA, and similar topics.

I think this book would be very useful for upper-division college courses in which students would need to identify, analyze, and evaluate arguments. The text is very specific about types and uses of argumentation, and Robinson provides a number of quick, illustrative examples that would likely help readers comprehend the concepts presented.

I. An Introduction to Reasoning
II. Argument Analysis
III. An Introduction to Evaluation
IV. An Introduction to Deductive Arguments
V. Common Inductive Arguments
VI. Social Arguments
VII. Scientific Reasoning

Ancillary Material

About the book.

Arguments in Context is a comprehensive introduction to critical thinking that covers all the basics in student-friendly language. Intended for use in a semester-long course, the text features classroom-tested examples and exercises that have been chosen to emphasize the relevance and applicability of the subject to everyday life. Three themes are developed as the text proceeds from argument identification and analysis, to the standards and techniques of evaluation: (i) the importance of asking the right questions, (ii) the influence of biases, cognitive illusions, and other psychological factors, and (iii) the ways that social situations and structures can enhance and impoverish our thinking. On this last point, the text includes sustained discussion of disagreement, cooperative dialogue, testimony, trust, and social media. Overall, the text aims to equip readers with a set of tools for working through important decisions and disagreements, and to help them become more careful and active thinkers.

About the Contributors

Thaddeus Robinson . Associate Professor of Philosophy, Muhlenberg College

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Teaching Guidelines
Teaching the Thesis Sentence

What Students Know (or Don't Know) about Argument

Professors teaching first-year writing classes often note that their students don't understand the terms of academic argument. Indeed, our students have several misconceptions about argument:

Students sometimes confuse argument with debate, taking a strong, oppositional position on a topic and then trying to "win" points.
Students sometimes conceptualize an argument as a fight: they spar with a text without taking the time to understand it.
Students sometimes think in black and white, neglecting the nuances of an argument.
Students sometimes jump on the first bandwagon they find, citing an authority with almost blind reverence and ignoring all other points of view.
Students can mistake argument for opinion, writing papers that are subjective and self-gratifying rather than objective and reader-based.
Students sometimes construct a weakly supported or poorly reasoned argument because it is, after all, their opinion, and they have a right to it.
Students can find themselves overwhelmed by the complexity of an intellectual problem, unable to take a stand.
Students too often rely on structures that they learned in high school (for instance, the five-paragraph theme), thereby crippling their arguments from the get-go.

Developing Critical Thinking Skills

When developing the courses that we teach, we want to design a course that will inspire our students to sharpen their critical thinking skills. In part, we accomplish this aim by presenting our students with challenging reading materials and engaging them in interesting class discussions. As students read more and talk more, they will gain knowledge and discover new contexts for their ideas. They will also (we hope) come to think more critically.

However, readings and class discussions by themselves do not insure that our students will improve their critical thinking skills. Many students read and listen passively, simply absorbing information. They do not reliably challenge the writers they are reading. Nor do they reliably read to challenge their own ideas. (For a discussion of how to improve your students' critical reading skills, see Integrating Reading and Writing .)

However, when students write, they cannot remain passive players in the learning game. Even the simplest writing task, such as a summary of an article, requires that students make important critical choices: What information is most important to this argument? What might be left out? More complex writing assignments ask students to make more difficult choices about a topic—choices that eventually bring them to the questions: "What is it that I think about this subject? How did I arrive at what I think? What are my assumptions, and are they valid? How can I work with facts, observations, inferences, and so on, in order to convince others of what I think?" (For a discussion of designing assignments and assignment sequences to improve critical thinking, see Syllabus and Assignment Design .)

In order to help students successfully and critically interrogate their ideas, professors may want to employ critical thinking pedagogy in their classrooms. Critical thinking pedagogy breaks down a student's existing critical thinking into discrete activities, and then shows students how to reflect carefully on each of these activities in order to sharpen their thinking skills.

Elements of Critical Thinking

Observations. From a series of observations, we can come to establish:
Facts. From a series of facts, or from an absence of fact, we make:
Inferences. Testing the validity of our inferences, we can make:
Assumptions. From our assumptions, we form our:
Opinions. Taking our opinions, we use evidence and the principles of logic to develop:
Arguments. And when we want to test our arguments and to challenge the arguments of others, we employ:
Critical Analysis (through which we challenge the observations, facts, inferences, assumptions, and opinions in the arguments that we are analyzing).

The process is not linear; rather, as we go about establishing our opinions and crafting our arguments, we return to our observations and facts, drawing new inferences and forming new assumptions that, in turn, affect the arguments that we are trying to make.

At first glance, these categories seem obvious. Shouldn't our students already understand that "observation" is not at all the same as "fact"? That inference differs from opinion? As we consider the matter more closely, however, we understand that our students don't always understand these distinctions, and that their writing might be considerably improved if they did. Defining these terms clearly (and pointing out the essential differences between them) is therefore the first step in providing our students with a critical vocabulary for their own thinking processes.

To begin, we need to make our students aware that their own premises and biases are not fact. We thus require our students to challenge these premises and biases. Finally, we encourage them to discover and to challenge the premises and biases of others. In short, we move our students to experience some shift in their understanding.

One way to facilitate this shift is to create writing assignments that require our students to move back and forth between observation and inference, fact and assumption—all the while marking where they are in the critical process. The primary aim is to encourage students to observe themselves and others in the critical process. We want students to be able:

To know the difference between reliable and unreliable observations;
To be persistent enough to observe objectively and thoroughly, and to collect sufficient factual or textual evidence;
To see patterns or relationships in what they have observed or discovered in their reading;
To infer and to assume carefully;
To form opinions even while keeping an open mind;
To create arguments understanding that these arguments are not the last word, but part of an ongoing debate in a scholarly process.

Elements of Argument: Claims and Evidence

Most of the teaching that we do in the first year asks students to master three important elements of the argument: thesis, evidence, and reason. The first—and perhaps most important—is the thesis sentence.

Elements of Argument

The claim/thesis sentence.

Most first-year students can tell you that a thesis sentence makes the claim on which an argument is based. But even while they understand the thesis' role, they are often unable to craft effective thesis sentences. They may make a thinking mistake and craft a thesis sentence that declares an observation rather than an argument. They may also write thesis sentences that are formulaic—i.e., sentences that state a claim and then offer a list of illustrations. They may not understand that a thesis can point to conflicting claims or raise a question. They may also write thesis sentences that are simply poor sentences, burying important ideas in subordinate clauses, thereby confounding the reader.

Each of these problems requires specific teaching strategies. In the first case (declaring an observation rather than an argument), an instructor might reveal the deficiencies of observations, inferences, and opinions by interrogating them, revealing the importance of evidence to argument. In the second case (writing formulaic theses), an instructor might model alternatives. In the final case (writing poor sentences), an instructor might introduce students to the principles of good style.

Instructors will find that the writing workshop is an ideal setting for thesis instruction. Having students brainstorm about one another's theses is a great way to teach them to refine/focus/broaden their arguments. You'll also want to use facilitative response methods in order to prod your students to better and better theses.

Often students write poor thesis sentences because they haven't gathered sufficient evidence. Others fail because they don't know how to work with the evidence they have. Some come up with their thesis sentences and then go looking for evidence, including only the ideas that seems to fit. Others go to secondary sources before they have an idea, allowing other arguments to stand in for their own. Still others turn their evidence into examples, offering a series of illustrative passages or observations as a substitute for argument. ("Here's one example of the failed health care system, here's another, and another; as we can see, the health care system is failing.")

Complicating the matter further is that evidence differs from discipline to discipline. In some sociology classes, careful observation may constitute evidence. In a literature class, evidence is found by a close reading of the text. In the sciences, evidence is built upon repeated empirical practices.

Instructors need to teach students what counts as evidence in their disciplines. They must also teach students what to do with the evidence that they have. Illustrating a point isn't quite the same thing as arguing it. An argument doesn't simply illustrate; it develops. Students should both discover and grow their arguments using sound reasoning skills.

Classroom Examples

We offer the following example from our writing classrooms: Five Ways to Teach the Thesis Sentence: Methods from Shelby Grantham, John Donaghy, Karen Gocsik, Sara Biggs Chaney, and Tom Cormen .

A Guide to English: Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing

An Introduction to Rhetoric

Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing

The Writing Process
Formatting and Citations
The Reference Collection
Searching for Books
Searching for Articles
Bibliographic Trace
Citation Management
Scholarly Associations
The English Language
Literary Form
Peoples and Identities
Periods and Movements in American Literature
Periods and Movements in Commonwealth Literatures
Thematic Genres and "Genre Fiction"
Award Winners (indexed)
Criticism & Theory
Creative Writing
Multimodal Composition
Text Analysis / Distant Reading
Digital Stewardship
Data Visualization
GIS and Geospatial Data
Statistical Analysis
Programming
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In this Section

Academic Writing: How It's Different
Critical Thinking, Reading, and Composing

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is one of the key goals and expectations of academic learning. Scholars in a range of fields (but especially philosophy, psychology, and education) have attempted to define what qualities make up what we call critical thinking, but one key aspect is the expectation that that we will master existing knowledge so that we are as well-positioned as we can be to revise existing understandings and create new knowledge. 1

One of the more influential models of critical thinking in the field of education is Bloom's Taxonomy, originally published in 1956 by educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom and a group of collaborators as A Taxonomy of Educational Objectives and later revised in 2001 by "A group of cognitive psychologists, curriculum theorists and instructional researchers, and testing and assessment specialists" as A Taxonomy for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment . 2

This model of learning emphasizes that we need to come to grips with the existing state of knowledge in a field -- recalling facts and basic concepts -- in order to build up to higher order tasks like understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating knowledge ourselves.

in teaching argument for critical thinking and writing an introduction the author states

Some students come into college believing that if they simply memorize a bunch of facts about a topic, use impressive words, and repeat them accurately and in the correct format, that will lead to a high grade. However academic culture comes with a different set of expectations. We are expected to go beyond remembering and understanding facts.

In academic writing, we aim to become full participants in an ongoing scholarly discourse , the discussion about our topic that is already taking place among experts in our field. This requires us to understand, apply, analyze, and evaluate the existing scholarly discussion about our topic, and engage with the evidence to contribute our own findings ( They Say, I Say ).

1 Lai, Emily R. "Critical thinking: A literature review." Pearson Assessments, 2011. URL: http://images.pearsonassessments.com/images/tmrs/CriticalThinkingReviewFINAL.pdf

2 Armstrong, P. (2010). Bloom’s Taxonomy. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. Retrieved October 9, 2022 from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/blooms-taxonomy/.

Critical Reading

In chapter 2 of his book, Writing in Response on "Active Reading," Matthew Parfitt discusses the following strategies for critically reading a text:

Read from Beginning to End (45)
Mark up the text (46)
Note the Knowledge Problem, Thesis Statement, and Key Claims (49)
Note Divisions, Turning Points, and Signposts (50)
Note Things That Puzzle You (51)
Gloss Unfamiliar References (51)

Parfitt also explains how to keep a Reading Journal to keep track of your own thoughts, and offers a number of further strategies for analyzing and evaluating the author's arguments, mapping the text, and ensuring that we represent the author's ideas fairly and accurately when we cite and respond to them in our papers.

<< Previous: An Introduction to Rhetoric
Next: The Writing Process >>
Last Updated: Apr 2, 2024 10:54 AM
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3 Teaching Argument Construction

Justine kingsbury.

[1] Most critical thinking textbooks tell students nothing about how to construct good arguments of their own. Their focus is on the identification and evalu a tion of other people’s arguments — as you would expect, since they are after all critical thinking textbooks.

Although teaching students how to evaluate arguments is the primary goal of critical thinking courses, such courses also provide the ideal context for the teaching of argument construction. Writing courses sometimes instruct students in how to write an argumentative essay, but they tend not to go into any detail about what differentiates a good argument from a bad one. By the middle of a critical thinking course, in contrast, students should have a c quired some idea of what makes a good argument good, so they are well placed to be told how to construct one themselves . Although learning the difference between a good argument and a bad argument goes some way towards showing you how to construct good arguments of your own, it does not go all the way. Some explicit instruction is needed.

However, it is difficult to provide such instruction in a large lecture class. The best way to learn argument construction, once you have learned how to evaluate arguments, is to construct arguments and then have them evaluated either by your peers or by a tutor. How can you teach argument construction in a lecture? All that there is to say about it (given that the students already know how to evaluate arguments) can be conveyed in about five minutes.

Here is a method of teaching argument construction that I have developed to suit a teaching situation in which there are two one-hour lectures and one one- hour tutorial per week. The lecture class contains approximately two hundred students: each tutorial group contains between ten and twenty. One lecture and one tutorial are devoted entirely to argument construction. The lecture consists of a five-minute introductory spiel followed by an in-class exercise in which we construct an argument as a group. Then the students are given a homework assign ment: a list of statements from which they are to choose o ne and construct the best argu ment they can for it. In the tutorial, their arguments will be presented to the class, and the class will make su g gestions about how the argument could be improved.

The five-minute introduction

The introductory spiel begins by reminding the students of what constitutes a good argument, and then goes on to suggest the following method for co n struct ing one:

Consider your conclusion. If it is a conclusion that you believe, think about why you believe it, and write those reasons down. If the conclusion is not one which you believe, think “What reasons might someone have for believing that conclusion?” and write those reasons down.
If you end up with several distinct sets of reasons, divide your reasons into related groups.
Focus on one reason or group of related reasons. Consider whether or not there are any unstated premises that need to be added before those reasons will support your conclusion. If there are, add those premises.
Consider whether or not your initial premises and unstated assumptions are plausible. Do they in turn need to be supported by additional premises to make them acceptable to your intended audience? Add as many such premises as you think are necessary. Now you have an argument.
Evaluate your argument as if it were someone else’s. Consider what objections to it might be raised by a reasonable and knowledgeable opponent. Are the premises plausible as they stand, or do they need further support? Do the premises provide enough support for the conclusion: if they were true, would they make the conclusion sufficiently likely? If not, adjust your argument accordingly. One way to test the amount of support the premises give the conclusion is to try to construct counterexamples: see if you can think of any situations in which the premises would all be true but the conclusion false. If you find any such counterexamples, then you should add premises, or adjust your premises, in such a way that the counterexamples are blocked, thus strengthening your argument.

The group exercise in constructing an argument

Having explained the method, I present the class with a claim for which we are going to construct arguments. It should be a claim that does not require any special iz ed knowledge to argue for, one that the students are likely to have thought about, and preferably one for which there are lots of different arguments. “God exists” works well. I invite the class to come up with re a sons why a person might believe that God exists, and write all of their re a sons up on the blackboard without comment. Here is a typical list.

Most people believe that God exists.
People have believed in God for a very long time.
The Bible says so.
How else could the world have come into existence?
God talks to me inside my head.
There are miraculous healings.
People speak in tongues.
I was brought up to believe that God exists.

If some of the reasons given seem to belong to the same argument, the st u dents put them together, and then they choose a reason or set of reasons that we will turn into an argument. I ask them what premises need to be added before the reason(s) will provide strong support for the conclusion, whether these added premises are plausible, and whether the original reason or re a sons is plausible. Often the premises require additional premises to support them. It is easiest to present this in the form of a diagram on the blackboard, the diagram method being one that the students have already learned while lea rning how to analyze and evalu ate arguments.

On the following page is an example constructed in a recent critical thin k ing class (obviously, there are more premises that could be added) .

The aim is to construc t t he best argument possible on the basis of the ch o sen premise or set of premises. Usually it will not be an absolutely watertight argu ment, and when it is as good as it seems to be getting, I sometimes ask the students to point out premises or links which are questionable.

Sometimes it turns out that nothing resembling a good argument can be constructed on the basis of the reason given. For example, there are no pla u sible premises whic h can be added which will make “ I was brought up to be lieve that God exists” a good reason to believe that God exists: this is an explanation of why the person believes in God, rather than evidence suppor t ing the claim that God exists. In such a case, or when we have successfully constructed an argument and still have more time, we go on to construct an argument based on one of the other reasons on the list.

The homework exercise

At the end of the lecture, the students are given a list of claims and asked to choose one of them and construct the best argument for it that they can. I tend to use somewhat controversial claims about issues that are currently in the news. Then the students bring their arguments along to the tutorial, and the class provides constructive feedback.

Tutors report that students have difficulty with the homework exercise, because by this stage they have been so schooled in how to detect fallacious arguments that they see the flaws in their own arguments before they even get as far as writing them down. This is all the more reason to persevere in teaching them this commonsense method of elaborating their actual reasons for belief into detailed and well-constructed arguments. It would be a pity if one of the effects of a critical thinking course were actually to prevent st u dents from constructing good arguments of their own. [2]

Previously published in the Teaching Supplement to Informal Logic, 2002 ↵

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Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing

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Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing is a brief yet versatile resource for teaching argument, persuasive writing, and research. It makes argument concepts clear and gives students strategies to move from critical thinking and analysis to crafting effective arguments. Comprehensive coverage of classic and contemporary approaches to argument — Aristotelian, Toulmin, Rogerian, visual argument, and more — provides a foundation for readings on current issues that students will want to engage with. A new Consider This activity encourages students to think critically about their own decision-making and the ways argument concepts impact their experiences. This affordable guide can stand alone or supplement a larger anthology of readings.

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“ Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing is simple to navigate, and students enjoy the readings. Each of the chapters guides students through the different writers’ processes. There are chapters about different forms of arguments that instructors can pick-and-choose from. The textbook ultimately touches on all of our requirements.” - Max Hernandez, College of the Desert “Barnet, Bedau, and OHara offer terrific instruction in preparing the students to write arguments in the Critical Reading and Critical Thinking chapters. The chapter on analyzing argument and writing arguments of their own provides a clear understanding of the methods of supporting an argument and showing that argument is not only taking a position for or against an issue.” - Susie Crowson, Del Mar College

Sylvan Barnet; Hugo Bedau; John O'Hara

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Sylvan Barnet

Sylvan Barnet was a professor of English and former director of writing at Tufts University. His several texts on writing and his numerous anthologies for introductory composition and literature courses have remained leaders in their field through many editions. His titles, with Hugo Bedau, include Current Issues and Enduring Questions; Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing ; and From Critical Thinking to Argument.

Hugo Bedau was a professor of philosophy at Tufts University and served as chair of the philosophy department and chair of the university’s committee on College Writing. An internationally respected expert on the death penalty, and on moral, legal, and political philosophy, he wrote or edited a number of books on these topics. He co-authored, with Sylvan Barnet, of Current Issues and Enduring Questions; Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing ; and From Critical Thinking to Argument.

John O'Hara

John Fitzgerald O’Hara is an associate professor of Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing at Stockton University, where he is the coordinator of the first-year critical thinking program, and former Director of the Master of Arts in American Studies Program. He regularly teaches writing, critical thinking, and courses in American literature and history and is a nationally-recognized expert on the 1960s. He is the co-author of Current Issues and Enduring Questions; Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing ; and From Critical Thinking to Argument.

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Critical thinking definition

Critical thinking, as described by Oxford Languages, is the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgement.

Active and skillful approach, evaluation, assessment, synthesis, and/or evaluation of information obtained from, or made by, observation, knowledge, reflection, acumen or conversation, as a guide to belief and action, requires the critical thinking process, which is why it's often used in education and academics.

Some even may view it as a backbone of modern thought.

However, it's a skill, and skills must be trained and encouraged to be used at its full potential.

People turn up to various approaches in improving their critical thinking, like:

Developing technical and problem-solving skills
Engaging in more active listening
Actively questioning their assumptions and beliefs
Seeking out more diversity of thought
Opening up their curiosity in an intellectual way etc.

Is critical thinking useful in writing?

Critical thinking can help in planning your paper and making it more concise, but it's not obvious at first. We carefully pinpointed some the questions you should ask yourself when boosting critical thinking in writing:

What information should be included?
Which information resources should the author look to?
What degree of technical knowledge should the report assume its audience has?
What is the most effective way to show information?
How should the report be organized?
How should it be designed?
What tone and level of language difficulty should the document have?

Usage of critical thinking comes down not only to the outline of your paper, it also begs the question: How can we use critical thinking solving problems in our writing's topic?

Let's say, you have a Powerpoint on how critical thinking can reduce poverty in the United States. You'll primarily have to define critical thinking for the viewers, as well as use a lot of critical thinking questions and synonyms to get them to be familiar with your methods and start the thinking process behind it.

Are there any services that can help me use more critical thinking?

We understand that it's difficult to learn how to use critical thinking more effectively in just one article, but our service is here to help.

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Introduction

“Information is just bits of data. Knowledge is putting them together. Wisdom is transcending them.” —Ram Dass

“Most university students are intellectually timid … they are “good at absorbing information but slow to question the ideas they study.” — R.S . Hansen

A good place to begin to understand what is meant by critical thinking, reading, and writing is to consider how college work differs from other kinds of schoolwork you may have done.

First, think about the reading and writing you did in elementary and secondary school. Usually, elementary school children learn how to decode and write letters or characters; they might memorize grammar rules, learn basic history, and begin basic mathematics. In general, they develop a foundation for the higher order skills they will learn later. Does this sound familiar? You may have a non-traditional or different educational experience, but it is likely you went through similar stages.

As children progress to middle school, high school, and college, their cognitive ability grows more complex, as you can see in the chart below:

(Source: Hansen, R.S. (n.d.). Ways in which college is different from high school. My CollegeSuccessStory.com .)

These cognitive phases were mapped out by American educational psychologist, Benjamin Bloom, who created a system of verbs for classifying and measuring observable actions and help us understand cognitive activity in the brain at various stages of schooling. In other words, these are the verbs that a student must do to demonstrate learning. Below is one graphic representation of Bloom’s taxonomy: The most sophisticated of these skills are the top three. They involve more critical thinking and a more advanced stage of learning than those below. While the top three skills are most associated with college-work, you will likely use all of these skills in your university assignments.

An analysis is not a summary. Summaries involve reporting concisely what an author has written. You do not include your own opinion or use judgmental vocabulary in a summary; you only include the opinions or judgments that come from the author or a source. When you analyze something, you do much more than summarize information or report an author’s opinions. Analysis means using your own views, perspectives, knowledge, or experiences.

Analysis can be a straightforward examination of each part, like an auto mechanic checking a car engine; however, in academic scholarship, it means bringing in your own perspective, opinions, observations, and evaluation .

We might analyze an author’s argument or data to see if it is strong; we might choose an element of a poem or literary work to study closely for significant elements like style, historical period, symbolism, rhyme and so forth. In the field of Engineering, one might analyze a design or code for ways to improve it.

Your purpose might be to make an argument, comparison, or connection, or offer an interpretation, reflection or evaluation. you might reach a different conclusion than the author of a study. you might report strengths or weaknesses, causes or effects, effectiveness, significance, or make an original connection. as you can see, analysis is a creative act..

Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing ultimately help to structure your thinking. This means, you know how to read for different purposes, and articulate and defend your views using support or evidence. These skills will enable you to join the wider academic community of knowledge-building, expansion, and credibility.

Asking Questions

Academic analysis begins with asking good questions about what you have seen or read. Learning to question respectfully everything you encounter. This practice can strengthen your critical thinking ability and skill at examining complex issues because it involves reflecting on what you’ve seen or read and evaluating its usefulness or significance. Furthermore, it helps you question the reliability of the flow of information to which you are exposed in media.

This practice will then lead to the ability to “read between the lines” when you hear, see, or read information. This enables you to make connections or find faults in logic. Reading between the lines means making inferences, catching symbolism, or seeing an indication.

Learn more about critical thinking, critical reading, and critical writing in the chapters to come.

Critical Reading, Writing, and Thinking Copyright © 2022 by Zhenjie Weng, Josh Burlile, Karen Macbeth is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Insight from the association between critical thinking and English argumentative writing: catering to English learners’ writing ability

1 College of Teacher Education, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, Zhejiang, China

2 Pinghu Normal College, Jiaxing University, Pinghu, Jiaxing, Zhejiang, China

Atif Saleem

3 School of Education, Huaibei Normal University, Huaibei, Anhui, China

Associated Data

The following information was supplied regarding data availability:

The raw data is available in the Supplemental File .

Introduction

English argumentative writing (EAW) is a ‘problem-solving’ cognitive process, and its relationship with critical thinking has drawn attention in China. This is because fostering EAW proficiency is a crucial element but a challenging task for Chinese high school English teaching and learning. The present study examined how critical thinking is related to Chinese high school students’ EAW performance. The study identified eight critical thinking disposition (CTD) subscales and aims to determine whether EAW and CTD are correlated.

A questionnaire modified from the Chinese Version Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory (CTDI-CV) and the Evaluation Criteria for English Argumentative Writing (ECEAW) were employed in this study. Both instruments were administered to 156 students from Grade 12. A purposive sampling of high school students was used in this study. Student EAW performance was scored by two experts based on the Evaluation Criteria for English Argumentative Writing.

A significant relationship was found between students’ CTD and EAW abilities. Furthermore, among the eight CTD subdispositions, cognitive maturity, truth-seeking, analyticity, and justice were found to be positively correlated with EAW, and they all were found to be the main predictors of EAW proficiency among high school students.

Zhangzhou high school students’ CTDs were overall positive, and students’ EAW performance correlated significantly with the overall CTD and its four subdispositions of cognitive maturity, truth-seeking, analyticity, and justice. These four subdispositions showed a significantly predictive validity on EAW performance as well.

English writing is an intricate problem-solving process that requires not only basic writing skills but also the capacity to imagine, make claims, be visionary, and provide proper supporting subarguments ( Kirkland & Saunders, 1991 ; Bruning & Horn, 2010 ; Howell et al., 2018 ) for the claims, especially when the claims are argumentative. Additionally, as a critical and versatile skill ( Graham, 2006 ), English writing is essential for academic success ( Al Asmari, 2013 ) and required globally, in political and business contexts, serving as a benchmark for college admissions, job applications, and career promotions ( National Commission on Writing, 2004 ). As an index of comprehensive English proficiency, English writing is also pivotal in countries such as China, South Korea, Japan, India, Netherlands, Sweden that study English as a second language. In China, an English writing task is a common assessment tool used on almost every standardized English test. However, English writing is a challenging and complex undertaking ( Anastasiou & Michail, 2013 ), even for native speakers. Only one-quarter (24%) of students at both grades 8 and 12 in the United States perform at a proficient English writing level, and only 3% from both grades achieved an advanced level of writing proficiency, according to the American National Center for Education Statistics ( National Center for Education Statistics, 2012 ). Chinese high school students also performed relatively poorly on English writing ( Liu, 2015 ; Bui & Luo, 2021 ).

What factors could determine English writing proficiency? Some scholars indicated that writing process is a part of cognition and considered writing is best understood as a set of thinking processes, which writers orchestrate or organize during the act of composing ( Flower & Hayes, 1981 ). The systematic cognitive research on the writing process started in the late 1970s, when Flower & Hayes (1980) applied cognitive psychological methods to investigate writing. They further emphasized that “think–and teach–writing” should be seen as “a problem-solving, cognitive process”. Since the early 1990s, researchers have tried to discover the relations between English writing proficiency, language thinking, and writing style ( Kobayashi & Rinnert, 1992 ; Sasaki & Hirose, 1996 ). It has become widely accepted that English passages are “linear”, that means an English paragraph usually begins with a topic statement, and then proceeds to develop that central idea and relate that idea to all the other ideas in the whole essay by a series of subdivisions of that topic statement to prove something, or perhaps to argue something. While Eastern languages such as Chinese are “roundabout”, taking a more indirect or circuitous approach to conveying information in which the development of a paragraph is “turning and turning in a widening gyre.” The circles or gyres turn around the subject and show it from a variety of tangential views, but the subject is never looked at directly ( Kamimura, 1996 ; Yin, 1999 ; Wu, 2003 ). Inspired by Kamimura (1996) , textual linguistics and discourse analysis methods have been widely adopted to study the effects of second language writing, including the structure ( Söter, 1988 ; Kirkpatrick, 1997 ; Kubota, 1998 ), paragraph arrangement ( Ostler, 1987 ; Bickner & Peyasantiwong, 1988 ), and characteristics of articulation and coherence ( Simpson, 2000 ). The increasing use of computers directed people’s attention to the factors of keyboard proficiency ( Barkaoui, 2016 ), automatic scoring system ( Deane, 2013 ; Liao, 2016 ) and different feedback types ( Hanjani, 2016 ; Latifi et al., 2021 ). Currently, studies on self-efficacy (an individual’s belief in his or her capacity to execute behaviors necessary to produce specific performance attainments) ( Sun et al., 2021 ) and lexical bundles (recurring sequences of words or phrases that commonly occur together in a specific language or domain. These bundles are often considered as fixed or semi-fixed expressions that have become established through frequent usage) ( Kim & Kessler, 2022 ) are the main focuses.

Previous studies including Devine, Railey & Boshoff (1993) , Deane et al. (2008) , Panahandeh & Asl (2014) , Decker et al. (2016) , have proven that proficient performance in English writing involves various cognitive skills that in most cases are complicated for English learners in particular ( Peng et al., 2021 ). The specificity of writing has been posited as the cause of this difficulty, since writing requires not only linguistic capability but also ideation and analytical capabilities, logic, and synthetic reasoning ( Anastasiou & Michail, 2013 ; Bruning et al., 2013 ). Furthermore, some cognitive ability factors have been attributed to students’ low writing performance.

As a part of cognitive competence, critical thinking skills have attracted researchers’ attention. Studies have attempted to discover the effects of critical thinking skills on English writing ( Yang, Sun & Yin, 2016 ; Li, 2021 ). However, the relationship has not been determined between the critical thinking disposition (CTD) and high school students’ English argumentative writing (EAW) performance, and empirical studies in China are insufficient. Thus, to narrow this gap, the current researchers aimed to explore whether CTD is correlated with high school students’ EAW performance. Hence, this study investigated eight CTD subscales as well as the relationship between EAW and CTD. The study aims to discovered CTD predictors of CTD for high school students’ EAW abilities. Thus, three specific questions are addressed in this study:

To this end, this study sheds light on three research questions:

1) What are high school students’ current CTDs in China?
2) Is there any significant relationship between high school students’ CTDs and their EAW performance?
3) What are the predictors of the CTD on EAW performance?

English argumentative writing (EAW)

Although writing in school includes a range of genres, the argumentative type is particularly significant ( Lin et al., 2020 ). Improving and fostering argumentative writing performance is a vital component of English teaching reforms in schools and universities globally as well as a main challenge for teachers of English writing at the K–12 and college levels ( Newell et al., 2011 ).

In the United States, EAW is emphasized as a passport to further educational and job opportunities ( Watt, 2010 ). Similarly, in China, argumentation is one of the key assessment elements on English language proficiency, especially in the high-stakes college entrance examination, which plays an essential role in college admission decisions. Additionally, EAW tasks have been widely adopted in internationally renowned English general proficiency examinations, such as the International English Language Testing System (IELTS), the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), and the Canadian Academic English Language Test (CAEL).

Regarding the IELTS, for instance, empirical findings have established that there is no correlation between argumentation writing and students’ IELTS test scores ( Coffin, 2004 ). However, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report revealed that approximately one-quarter of the students provide logical reasons in support of the examples they use in their argumentative essays, and students often fail to consider alternative perspectives ( National Center for Education Statistics, 2012 ). These problems also occur in China ( Cai, 2017 ; Zhang, 2017 ; Cai, 2019 ). As stipulated in the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China (2018) , Grade 12 students in China should be able to actively utilize resources to clearly express opinions in writing in a structured manner ( Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, 2018 ). Thus, improving English argumentation proficiency is an important but difficult part of teaching and learning English writing in China.

From a cognitive perspective ( Hayes, 1996 ; Graham, 2018 ; MacArthur & Graham, 2016 ), English argumentation is a process of problem-solving requiring self-regulation to reach the author’s rhetorical targets ( Graham & Harris, 1989 ). Writing proficiency is affected adversely by the inability to strategically allocate limited cognitive resources ( Ferretti & Fan, 2016 ). Skilled writers write arguments based on their knowledge reserve of the topic, critical assessment standards, and argumentative discourse ( Ferretti & Lewis, 2019a ).

What are the critical evaluation standards on argumentative writing achievements? Previous studies including Nimehchisalem & Mukundan (2011) , Paek & Kang (2017) , Ferretti & Graham (2019b) and Wang, Lee & Park (2022) have inspired research about English argumentation and have promoted EAW performance assessments. An initial objective was to identify the linguistic features in high-quality writing samples ( Witte & Faigley, 1981 ; McNamara et al., 2015 ), which Wen Qiufang and Liu Runzhou did. Based on close scrutiny of the 20 best compositions from 1–4 grades of English major undergraduates in China, the authors hypothesized four parameters ( i.e ., relevance, explicitness, coherence, and sufficiency) accompanying the supposedly four thinking stages in writing ( i.e ., topic comprehension, thesis statement development with supporting arguments, organizing a coherent discourse, and putting ideas into writing). Afterward, the authors tried to verify/falsify their hypotheses by marking another 100 compositions of the same kind twice over a 3-month period, and doing so yielded a framework for analyzing the general features of Chinese students’ EAW and salient problems in the students’ abstract thinking ( Wen & Liu, 2006 ). The Evaluation Criteria for English Argumentative Writing (ECEAW) they constructed has been widely used in China ( Liu, 2013 ; Yang, 2014 ; Xu, 2016 ; Li, 2018 ). However, until now, the analysis of English argumentation has mostly been at the undergraduate level, and little attention has been given to high school students in China.

Critical thinking

An essential skill in education is critical thinking because it helps students to reflect on and grasp their own viewpoints. This skill allows students to use their own observations and expertise to make sense of things ( Raj et al., 2022 ). Various definitions of critical thinking have been given. For instance, Glaser (1942) defined critical thinking as “an attitude of being disposed to consider in a thoughtful way the problems and subjects that come within the range of one’s experience; knowledge of the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning; and some skills in applying these methods”. This definition considers critical thinking as a synthesis of attitude, knowledge, and skills. However, Ennis (1987) insisted critical thinking was “a reasonable, reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do”. He believed critical thinking contained both critical thinking silks and personality traits.

Critical thinking has also been described as “a mode of thinking, about any subjects, contents or problems, in which the thinker improves the quality of his or her thinking by skillfully taking charge of the structures inherent in thinking and imposing intellectual standards upon them” ( Paul & Binker, 1990 ). These definitions reveal that critical thinking is a mode of thinking on the subjects within our realm of experience and helping us make decisions. Critical thinking should be reflective, reasonable, and logical, containing both critical thinking skills and personal dispositions. Peter Facione offered a more precise definition in the Delphi Report. It states that critical thinking is “a purposeful, self-regulatory judgment which results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and inference, as well as explanation of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations upon which that judgment is based” ( Facione, 1990 ).

To this end, critical thinking consists of a learned collection of analytic thinking skills and a tendency to engage in the reasoning process ( Halpern, 2003 ). Earlier studies have shown that the critical thinking disposition (CTD) is an inner motivation that guides decision-making and problem-solving, and that is essential for the application of critical thinking and the tendency to think critically ( Colucciello, 1997 ; Facione, Facione & Giancarlo, 2000 ). Based on these studies, Fesler-Birch (2005) further found that CTD could be evaluated as a baseline for critical thinking performance.

The California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory (CCTDI) ( Facione & Facione, 1992 ) is one of the most well established instruments for assessing students’ CTDs, designed on the definition of critical thinking formulated by Peter Facione in 1990. The CCTDI contains seven subdispositions with 75 items: inquisitiveness, self-confidence, truth-seeking, open-mindedness, analyticity, systematicity, and cognitive maturity ( Facione, Facione & Sanchez, 1994 ). Since its development in 1990s, the CCTDI has been widely used in CTD studies ( Miri, David & Uri, 2007 ; Zuriguel-Pérez et al., 2017 ; Du et al., 2013 ). The CCTDI has different versions. Luo and Yang were the first to translate the CCTDI into Chinese and to use it in in China ( Lou & Yang, 2001 ).

After being revised twice, this version has good internal consistency and reliability. Peng et al. (2004) argued that, although the previous Chinese version of the CCTDI included semantic equivalence, it ignored cultural factors. Therefore, Peng et al. (2004) adapted and modified the CCTDI to obtain a conceptually equivalent Chinese variant that has the cultural sensitivity to be applied with Chinese-speaking students. However, Peng et al. (2004) chose nursing students to test the instrument’s validity and reliability and doing so limits the questionnaire’s generalizability. Therefore, Wen et al. (2009) retranslated the CCTDI and constructed the CTDI–CV, mainly focused on checking the consistency of the Chinese translation with the original English, leaving no translation traces, and making the language consistent and smooth but not overly colloquial ( Wen et al., 2009 ). The revised CTDI–CV contains 54 items with eight subdispositions: analyticity (the ability to independently and objectively analyze life problems and to foresee the outcome or consequences of an event based on facts), truth-seeking (the desire to seek the truth and to explore the essence of things), open-mindedness (tolerance and openness to external things and different perspectives), systematicity (the ability to overcome difficulties and solve problems with perseverance and an indomitable will), cognitive maturity (a measure of whether the understanding of things is comprehensive and life events are considered carefully), inquisitiveness (an instinct people have to be curious about the unknown), self-confidence (the trust in one’s ability to do a certain thing well or solve a certain problem), and justice (conscious criteria for judging whether something is morally and legally fair) ( Wen et al., 2009 ). Details have been shown in Table 1 .

SOURCE: Facione & Facione (1992) and Wen et al. (2009) .

The CTDI–CV has generally been proven to be a reliable and valid instrument for assessing Chinese students’ CTDs ( Wen et al., 2010a , 2010b , 2011 ). However, the CTDI–CV has mostly been used for undergraduates or postgraduates and a preliminary analysis revealed that its internal reliability in this study was not acceptable. Therefore, the instrument was slightly modified for high school students to ensure its reliability and validity. Additionally, the reliability and validity analyses for the modified CTDI–CV were checked by educators and experts at the School of Educational Science in Minnan Normal University, China.

EAW and CTD

English argumentation is a “problem-solving” cognitive procedure, demanding self-regulation to reach the author’s targets ( Graham & Harris, 1989 ), and critical thinking is “a purposeful, self-regulatory judgment which results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and inference, as well as explanation of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations upon which that judgment is based” ( Facione, 1990 ). Dong & Yue (2015) have posited that English writing as a cognitive process is indivisible from the cultivation of critical thinking ability, and their study employing questionnaires and writing test has shown that students’ critical thinking abilities are related to on their English writing performance. Therefore, improving the ability to think critically is essential for fostering English writing abilities ( Li, Gu & Qian, 2019 ).

Dong & Yue (2015) showed that students’ English writing proficiency is strongly influenced by their critical thinking skills, and suggested that cultivating students’ critical thinking skill is necessary for improving their English writing competence. Since EAW depends on critical thinking ability to analyse facts, produce and organise ideas, maintain opinions, make comparisons, judge arguments, and solve problems by the use of existing information, previous knowledge, experience, and world knowledge when writing’ ( Barnawi, 2011 ). However, what is the relationship between them?

Based on an analysis of 181 prospective teachers from six different departments in Turkey, Bayat (2014) found that the prospective teachers’ critical thinking levels were related statistically significantly with their academic writing success. Similarly, a significant and positive relationship between college students’ critical thinking skills and their English writing ability was found in China ( Wu, 2016 ). Based on a study of 104 English major students, Soodmand Afshar, Movassagh & Radi Arbabi (2017) established a strong correlation between students’ critical thinking skills and their English writing abilities. In addition, a significant relationship between the CTD and English writing has regularly been reported.

McLean (2005) claimed that a negative CTD accounts for a low writing proficiency. A study involving 73 senior English major students at a Shanghai university showed that the students were weak in CTDs and had comprehension difficulties as well as in demonstrating in-depth rhetorical clarity in academic English writing. This result implied a correlation between students’ CTDs and their English academic writing performance ( Mu, 2016 ). Liu (2018) explored 120 postgraduate students majoring in English and found a significant positive correlation between students’ CTDs and their academic English writing. A positive linear correlation has also been found between critical thinking and English writing among secondary school students. Jin (2021) also examined 211 grade eight students’ CTDs at the junior high school level and found that students demonstrated negative CTDs, which were positively correlated with their English writing achievements. Besides, Liu (2021) found a significant correlation between the CTDs of grade 12 students and their writing proficiency on English practical writing and continual writing tasks.

All the above discussions emphasize the importance of critical thinking to English writing, and some researchers further explored the relationship between critical thinking and English writing. In these studies, participants were mainly form college, and the types of English writing involved were various, including picture writing, story writing, academic writing and so on. In summary, very few studies focus on the relationship between high school students’ critical thinking and their performance on English argumentative writing. Hopefully, this study may bridge the gaps in the literature.

Materials and Methods

Procedure and participants.

This paper focus on high school student’ critical thinking and their proficiency on English argumentative writing, so the population is all the high school students. A purposive sampling of high school students was used in this study. The reason for purposive sampling is the better matching of the sample to the aims and objectives of the research, thus improving the rigour of the study and trustworthiness of the data and results ( Campbell et al., 2020 ). Because this study aimed to find out the relationship between critical thinking and English writing, it’s better to take students with higher ability on critical thinking and English writing expression as participants, so that the association can be clearer and easier to be found. Since the development of critical thinking is limited by the level of cognitive development, critical thinking sprouts from childhood and get higher especially mature in senior grade of high school ( Ruggiero, 2012 ). Considering this, a sample of 189 students from grade 12 students was involved in the study. All the participants were taken from a high school in Zhangzhou, China, because they were easily accessible to the investigators. Of the 189 questionnaires distributed to the students, 156 (84%) valid copies were returned.

Additionally, students were given 40 min to write a 120-word English argumentative essay on the same topic, “No smoking in public places?”, which was prompted by sources from a relevant survey mentioned in the test (details in Table 2 ). In the writing, students were asked to show their opinions, defend sub-arguments and criticize counter-argument.

Two English teachers from Minnan Normal University scored the tests, and the average of the two scores was taken as the final score for students’ EAW performance. The teachers had taught and studied English writing for over 13 years. A head teacher from Minnan Normal University who was specialized in English writing teachers’ training and relevant researches was responsible for the evaluation and training. Before the formal scoring, the head teacher trained the two teachers based on ECEAW. After the training, the two teachers were asked to score some samples of EAW to test whether they have known the score criteria well. The result showed they have understood ECEAW well, and the scores given by them had no significant difference. Afterwards, the two teachers started to score the EAW from participants in two separate rooms to ensure the process was transparent. After scoring, the two teachers cross-checked all the scores, which the head teacher then rechecked and did not find significant difference. If there were, he would take careful. Then, since the authors have been studied English writing for several years and also specialize in English writing study, they cross-checked of everything to make sure the process and results were unbiased. This triangulation process ensured the reliability of the final scores. Table 3 presents the descriptive statistics of the final EAW scores.

A correlational research design was adopted to explore the relationship between the CTD (independent variable) and EAW (dependent variable). The CTD level was measured by the Chinese version of California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory (CTDI-CV), and participants’ performance on EAW was measured by the Evaluation Criteria for English Argumentative Writing (ECEAW).

The CTDI–CV was adapted by Wen et al. (2009) from the CCTDI ( Facione & Facione, 1992 ) and has been widely applied in the Chinese context ( Jin, 2021 ; Li, 2011 ; Ruan, 2012 ; Li, 2018 ; Lu, 2020 ), mainly in studies involving English learners.

Harman’s single-factor test had an explanatory variance for the first common factor of 25.76% is less than 40%, confirming no evidence of common method variance. Regarding the CTDI–CV questionnaire, eight subdispositions had 54 items, measuring the following subscales: analyticity (seven items), truth-seeking (seven items), open-mindedness (seven items), systematicity (six items), cognitive maturity (eight items), inquisitiveness (six items), self-confidence (seven items), and justice (six items). Each item was rated on a six-point scale of “strongly agree” (6), “agree” (5), “somewhat agree” (4), “somewhat disagree” (3), “disagree” (2) and “strongly disagree” (1), and the total scores of the CTDI–CV were between 54 and 324. Unloaded items were removed in the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and the remaining items were retained for all eight factors. The items in systematicity, inquisitiveness, and justice remained the same. However, analyticity, open-mindedness, and self-confidence decreased to six items, and truth-seeking and cognitive maturity decreased to five items. Details are shown in Table 1 .

The instrument reliability was analyzed using Cronbach’s alpha, and the eight subscales in CTD showed reliability scores of 0.73, 0.71, 0.74, 0.70, 0.80, 0.72, 0.81, and 0.79. As all reliability scores were beyond the 0.7 threshold, the constructs were determined to be reliable ( Hancock & Mueller, 2013 ; Saleem et al., 2020 ; Byrne, 2016 ).Construct validity ensured the questionnaire’s validity, and six factors were generated using an EFA. The results showed that the validity was acceptable (Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin test = 0.629 > 0.6; Bartlett’s test of sphericity: χ 2 = 2,665.49, df = 1,431, p < 0.01; factor loadings for all factor’s items: 0.68–0.81; total variance: 66.39%, eigenvalue >1). Thus, the tool was reliable and valid.

The ECEAW was determined by Wen and used to measure students’ EAW proficiency and was divided into five levels ( i.e ., best, good, moderate, poor, and bad) according to four parameters ( i.e ., relevance, explicitness, coherence, and sufficiency) accompanying the supposed four thinking stages in English writing: topic comprehension, thesis statement development with supporting arguments, organizing coherent discourses, and putting ideas into writing ( Wen & Liu, 2006 ). Table 4 provides the ECEAW details.

Data analyses

The data analyses were performed using SPSS version 23 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA). Chinese high school students’ CTDs were approached using a descriptive statistical analysis, which illustrated the students’ CTDs and eight subdispositions. Next, as this study focused on the relationship between the students’ CTD and their performance on EAW, a Pearson correlation analysis was employed. It was followed to determine whether there was any significant correlation between the students’ EAW proficiency and their CTDs as well as its eight dimensions. Last, in order to reduce interference between the variables, multiple regression analyses were conducted to examine the prediction of the students’ CTDs subdispositions and their writing proficiency on English argumentation. The prediction of the different CTD dimensions for argumentative writing was explored in the regression analysis in detail.

During data screening, 33 questionnaires found to be incomplete and were thus removed. The instrument’s face and content validity were ensured by educational experts from the School of Educational Science in Minnan Normal University, China. The data’s internal reliability was determined by calculating Cronbach’s α coefficients, and the construct validity was verified by conducting an EFA using the SPSS package.

Ethical concerns and consent detail

Ethics committee approval was obtained from Zhejiang Normal University’s institutional review board. The ethical principle of informed consent was upheld: each participant in the questionnaire was informed in advance of what was to be studied, and its possible benefits and impacts. All were informed of their right to withdraw their agreement to participate at any stage before the study was published. Finally, the researchers upheld the right to privacy by preserving the participants’ anonymity at all points in the research process, ensuring that the publication of the research would not result in any conflicts of interest.

The two instruments involved in this study, namely The Chinese version of California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory (CTDI-CV) and Evaluation Criteria for English Argumentative Writing (ECEAW) were used to measure participants’ CTD level and their performance on EAW. Both instruments are from Wen Qiufang, and the researchers have permission to use these instruments from the copyright holders/authors.

Table 5 presents the descriptive statistics of the students’ CTDs and the eight elements. Overall, the students’ CTD was positive (M = 4.08 > 1.52). Among the eight dimensions, inquisitiveness (M = 4.41, SD = 0.51) scored the highest, while self-confidence (M = 3.62, SD = 0.46) scored the lowest. Besides, the students scored higher on justice (M = 4.38, SD = 0.52), cognitive maturity (M = 4.36, SD = 0.50), open-mindedness (M = 4.32, S = 0.44) and truth-seeking (M = 4.02, SD = 0.42) but lower on analyticity (M = 3.91, SD = 0.40) and systematicity (M = 3.63, SD = 0.43). The results also showed that five dimensions (inquisitiveness, justice, cognitive maturity, open-mindedness, and truth-seeking) had positive traits, while three dimensions (analyticity, systematicity, and self-confidence) had negative traits.

The Pearson Correlation analysis revealed that the CTD and EAW were significantly moderately correlated (r = 0.543, p < 0.01). In addition, EAW proficiency was significantly positively correlated with four CTD subscales: cognitive maturity (r = 0.529, p < 0.01), truth-seeking (r = 0.416, p < 0.01), analyticity (r = 0.348, p < 0.01), and justice (r = 0.185, p < 0.05). EAW proficiency was not significantly correlated at the p = 0.05 level with inquisitiveness (r = 0.333), systematicity (r = 0.856), self-confidence (r = 0.067), and open-mindedness (r = 0.888). The Pearson correlation also shows that there were some insignificant associations between CTD and EAW as it is depicted in Table 6 .

AL, analyticity; IQ, inquisitiveness; ST, systematicity; SC, self-confidence; TS, truth-seeking; CM, cognitive maturity; OM, open-mindedness; JS, justice; CTD, critical thinking disposition; EAW, English argumentative writing.

In line with the prediction of the CTD on EAW performance, a multiple regression analysis is carried out to examine the extent to which the CTD can significantly predict EAW proficiency. As it is presented in Table 7 , eight CTD subscales were the independent variables and EAW proficiency was the dependent one, while VIF results showde no evidence of collinearity. The R-square (R 2 ) of 0.436 and adjusted R-square (R 2 ) of 0.405 revealed four CTD subscales: cognitive maturity, truth-seeking, analyticity and justice accounted for 43.6% of the variance in EAW proficiency. The standardized regression coefficients (Beta) of 0.419, 0.257, 0.231 and 0.143 for cognitive maturity, analyticity, truth-seeking and justice, respectively, indicate that the four subscales significantly and positively predicted students’ EAW performance ( p < 0.05). This finding implies that high school students’ EAW performance can be explained by the subdispositions of cognitive maturity, analyticity, truth-seeking and justice, among which cognitive maturity (Beta = 0.419) strongly predicts EAW proficiency. The analysis indicates the following regression equation for the dependent and independent variables: “EAW proficiency = 10.266 + 0.419 * cognitive maturity + 0.257 * analyticity + 0.231 * truth-seeking + 0.143* justice”.

EAW performance is a major topic of interest in English teaching and learning, particularly in China’s high schools. The present study explored the current CTD of Chinese high school students and the relationship between that and their EAW performance. The study also identified the CTD subdispositions that are positively related to and the main predictors of the high school students’ EAW performance in China. Additionally, the study adds fresh evidence about the Chinese version of the CCTDI when applied in a non-Western context.

The results showed that the high school students’ CTDs were overall positive (M = 4.08), that is in line with Qing, Shen & Tian (2010) , who examined the CTD of 121 grade 12 students in YuJin High School (M = 4.23), and Li (2021) , who found a positive disposition in grade 11 high school students (M = 4.095). These results revealed that high school students’ CTDs have not improved dramatically during the past decade. However, after 3 years’ further study in university, the students’ CTD scores tended (M = 4.289) ( Liu, 2018 ). This finding therefore contradicts ( Jin ’s 2021 ) finding that junior school students’ CTD at grade 8 is overall negative (M = 3.52). One reason is that the CTD is enhanced with age and learning, since the CTD is a psychological attribute that shapes one’s beliefs or actions ( Profetto-McGrath et al., 2003 ) enabling individuals to sufficiently solve problems and to make judgments as a product of thinking ( Facione & Facione, 2007 ).

Compared with the CTD scores from other Asian, Africa and Middle Eastern countries—such as Israel (M = 4.02) ( Ben-Chaim, Ron & Zoller, 2000 ), Turkey (M = 3.25 ± 0.27) ( Kaya, Şenyuva & Bodur, 2017 ), Japan (M = 3.91) ( Kawashima & Petrini, 2004 ) and Ghana (M = 3.95) ( Boso, van der Merwe & Gross, 2021 )—the result of this study is relatively high (M = 4.08), and close to some developed countries such as Australia (M = 4.11) ( Tiwari, Avery & Lai, 2003 ) and Italy (M = 4.10) ( Zoller et al., 2010 ). This finding may partly challenge the statement that students from Asian societies ( vs . those from non-Asian ones) are less inclined to demonstrate CTDs ( Wang et al., 2019 ). However, room remains for improvement in comparison with other developed countries such as Norway (M = 4.72) ( Wangensteen et al., 2010 ) and America (M = 4.33) ( Yeh & Chen, 2003 ).

Additionally, the results also suggested that five dimensions (inquisitiveness, justice, cognitive maturity, open-mindedness, and truth-seeking) had positive traits, while three dimensions (analyticity, systematicity, and self-confidence) had negative traits. This showed that students had a strong interest in the unknown world, an inclusive attitude towards new knowledge, a relatively mature understanding about things and a passion for exploration, but they were not good at analyzing objectively and logically, lacking perseverance and confidence.

The current study reported a moderate relationship (r = 0.543, p < 0.01) between students’ CTD and their EAW performance. These findings confirm those of earlier studies, such as Li (2021) , Liu (2021) and Jin (2021) . One reason is that the CTD correlates significantly with the total content knowledge resources and presentation strategies of English writing ( Yeh & Chen, 2003 ). This finding indicates that students with stronger CTDs have wider content knowledge resources and presentation strategies, which are essential for good EAW performance. And among the eight subscales of CTD, cognitive maturity, truth-seeking, analyticity, and justice have positive correlation with EAW. This is because the four mentioned dispositions have direct influences on EAW, including the organization of writing, layout of sub-claims and examples, development of logical reasoning and so on. While the other four aspects, open-mindedness, systematicity, inquisitiveness and self-confidence have more invisible influence on critical thinking and indirect association with EAW. According to interviews, students who score highly on the CTDs perform better on the four thinking stages involved in EAW i.e ., topic comprehension, thesis statement development with supporting arguments, organization of a coherent discourse, and putting ideas into writing ( Liu, 2021 ). For instance, understanding the task topic refers to the process of understanding concepts and judging the relationships among them. This process may involve the abilities of cognitive maturity and analyticity, since the former can help writers better understand the meaning of the title while the latter enables students to judge the relationships among concepts faster. Regarding developing a thesis statement with supporting arguments, which is central to writing, this process it is greatly influenced by the dispositions of truth-seeking and justice. The desire to seek the truth and explore the essence of things could drive students to carefully observe their surroundings, from which EAW’s supporting arguments are usually derived. Moreover, the sense of justice could hone students’ abilities draw distinctions, a skill that allow them to perceive or draw conclusions after thinking deeply about some social phenomena in daily life, and this process could be converted into a central EAW thesis statement. Meanwhile, the dispositions of systematicity, self-confidence, and open-mindedness have some effects on EAW that are not directly relevant, as they were not significantly correlated at the 0.05 level. The disposition of inquisitiveness, which refers to ‘an instinct that people are curious about the unknown’ ( Wen et al., 2009 ), help to expand students’ knowledge reservoirs, but it does not help them to focus on exercising logical and critical thinking abilities. As a result, it had an insignificant relation with EAW performance.

The four related subscales (cognitive maturity, analyticity, truth-seeking and justice, respectively), were proved also have prediction on EAW proficiency. The other four subscales—inquisitiveness, systematicity, self-confidence, and open-mindedness—were not predictors, because they are not significantly related to EAW. The reason cognitive maturity, truth-seeking, analyticity and justice are significantly correlated and positively predictive of EAW was discussed in the context of the definitions of these four subdispositions and the EAW writing process.

Cognitive maturity refers to ‘a measure of whether the understanding of things is comprehensive and life events are considered carefully’, and truth-seeking is defined as ‘the desire to seek the truth and to explore the essence of things’ ( Wen et al., 2009 ). Persuasive English argumentation requires an individual to ‘find the essence of the topic’ and to relate convincing subarguments and examples gleaned from the ‘comprehensive and thoughtful understanding of things in life’. On the other hand, analyticity is defined as ‘the ability to independently and objectively analyze life problems and to foresee the outcome or consequences of an event based on facts’ ( Wen et al., 2009 ), which is required throughout the argumentative writing process, specifically during the layout process. Justice is defined as ‘conscious criteria for judging whether something is morally and legally fair’ ( Wen et al., 2009 ), and do help provide arguments in EAW writing, since the sense of justice can promote students to observe things around them objectively. These relations also can be found in the comparison between good and poor articles. For example, a student with high scores in these four dispositions gave three sub-argument to support his opinion “people shouldn’t smoke in public places”, from “Smoking is harmful to personal health and wealth” to “Smoking in public places violates the rights of others” and “Smoking in public places poses a significant fire hazard and thread public safety”. From individual to others and to public group, the argumentation of the points of view was progressive. Meanwhile, the student used research data, news reports and celebrity quotes to support the sub-arguments. The whole structure of his EAW was logical and smooth. Additionally, during the argument, the student criticized the counter-arguments mentioned in the supplied material to strengthen the credibility of his opinion, such as “Although smoking could be seen as an individual right, public interest should be the most important thing in public places”. While a student with low scores in these four dispositions even though also chose to defend “people shouldn’t smoke in public places”, but he only mentioned the sub-arguments from the resources in the test, from “Smoking is a pollution” to “Smoking is wasting money” and to “Smoking is harmful to the health”. The logical correlations between these sub-arguments were not clearly articulated in the essays and some empty words were used to support the points which made the essay unconvincing.

Besides, a prominent feature of writing from the cognitive perspective is problem-solving ( Graham & Harris, 1997 ), which is regarded as crucially important and thought to positively affect EAW performance. Thus, a student with high CTD scores is expected to better gain the essence of the argumentative topic and comprehensively analyze the topic in a piece of EAW. According to this, we argue that cognitive maturity, truth-seeking, and analyticity, as the CTD components, could be strong EAW predictors. Therefore, it is helpful to enhance these CTDs to develop better EAW performance, since these were found to be linked to success in English argumentation.

Limitations and future research

This study is limited in the research region and critical thinking aspects. First, the present study is limited to a developing, non-Western, Asian high schools. Considering this, high school students from other cities or relevant teachers should be involved in future study to deeply understand the relationship between CTD and EAW. Second, the current study is limited to the CTD, and other critical thinking aspects such as critical thinking skills have not yet to be explored. Incorporating other critical thinking factors in future studies could generate insightful results. Besides, the possible differences caused by years of study or other demographic factors need to be examined in future research.

Conclusion and implications

EAW teaching and learning has been of prime importance for English education in China, since EAW performance is currently significant on both international and domestic English language proficiency tests. To discover the predictive influencing factors on EAW proficiency improve EAW performance, this study explored the relationship between the CTD (independent variable) and the EAW (dependent variable) proficiency of high school students with an emphasis on the CTD subscales. High school students’ CTDs were overall positive, and students’ EAW performance correlated significantly with the overall CTD and its four sub-dispositions of cognitive maturity, truth-seeking, analyticity, and justice. Furthermore, among the eight CTD subscales, only four dispositions (cognitive maturity, truth-seeking, analyticity and justice) showed a significantly predictive validity on EAW performance. The findings of the current study will contribute to the knowledge of Chinese high school students’ cognition and English learning status. In addition, it has implications for the enhancement of EAW teaching and learning in China.

The findings showed that high school students in Zhangzhou, China generally have positive CTDs, i.e ., they perform well on the abilities of analyticity, truth-seeking, systematicity, open-mindedness, cognitive-maturity, inquisitiveness, self-confidence, and justice. In addition, their CTDs have been proven to be related to their performance on EAW. Specifically, their dispositions on cognitive maturity, truth-seeking, analyticity, and justice are related to their EAW proficiency score. A further analysis revealed that Chinese high school students’ EAW performance can be predicted by their abilities in terms of cognitive maturity, truth-seeking, analyticity and justice. These results provide references for English teachers to improve students’ English argumentative writing performance.

Primarily, in line with previous study findings in China ( Sun, 2020 ; Ren, 2020 ), instructors in China should be concerned about students’ CTDs, since students from China and other, more developed countries continue to have a gap. Secondarily, a significant and positive correlation was found between EAW and CTD as well as its subdispositions—such as cognitive maturity, truth-seeking, analyticity, and justice—which has been confirmed in previous studies ( Han, 2020 ; Feng, 2021 ). Therefore, instructors should provide clear CTD definitions for students and strengthen their critical thinking awareness. Lastly, teachers are urged to conduct suitable CTD training, especially on the four predictive subdispositions ( i.e ., cognitive maturity, truth-seeking, analyticity and justice), which could foster and facilitate four thinking stages involved in EAW and directly improve high school students’ EAW performance.

EAW is included as a prompt in the writing sections of some international standardized English exams ( e.g ., TOEFL and IELTS) and English for Specific Purposes exams, which necessitate argumentative writing. Besides, EAW is a crucial skill in China because the performance on English argumentation regards as a key assessment element on English language proficiency, especially in the high-stakes college entrance examination, which plays an essential role in college admission decisions. Teachers of English writing in high school should focus on students’ critical thinking and help them do a better job of analyzing the topic, establishing a layout, and organizing and writing argumentation logically, especially because EAW skills increasingly play crucial roles in students’ general academics at all of their study levels ( Németh & Kormos, 2001 ).

Supplemental Information

Supplemental information 1, supplemental information 2, funding statement.

The authors received no funding for this work.

Additional Information and Declarations

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Yanfang Hu conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, prepared figures and/or tables, and approved the final draft.

Atif Saleem conceived and designed the experiments, analyzed the data, authored or reviewed drafts of the article, and approved the final draft.

The following information was supplied relating to ethical approvals ( i.e ., approving body and any reference numbers):

College of Teacher Education, Zhejiang Normal University

IMAGES

Teaching Argument for Critical Thinking and Writing: An Introduction
Critical Thinking: What is an Argument?
Sample of Critical Thinking Essay.
Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing: A Brief Guide to Argument by
(PDF) Critical Thinking and/or Argumentation in Higher Education
Critical thinking theory, teaching, and practice

VIDEO

EP.1 What is an Argument ?
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Looking For Evidence
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COMMENTS

Critical Thinking and Writing: An Introduction
Teaching Argument for Critical Thinking and Writing: An Introduction George Hillocks Jr. The University of Chicago [email protected] Recently, a prominent group of English educators claimed that the "ultimate rationale for the teaching of language arts" is "creating a just society whose citizens are critically literate about their world."
Teaching Argument for Critical Thinking and Writing: An Introduction
Exploring the use of Primary Argumentative Documents to Teach Argumentative Writing. This book discusses Argumentative Writing and Interdisciplinary Pedagogies, which aims to provide a framework for teachers to consider and respond to the challenges faced by teachers in the context of argumentative writing. Expand.
PDF Teaching Argument Writing, Grades 6-12
"e author and publisher wish to thank those who have generously given permission to ... "Teaching Argument for Critical "inking and Writing: An Introduction" by George Hillocks, Jr., originally appeared in the English Journal , Vol. 99, No. 6, July 2010. ... Teaching Argument for Critical Thinking xv Introduction: Planning for Powerful ...
Teaching Argumentation
People who write about argument (and teaching argument) imagine argument as two things: a process of (the act of) of inquiry, discovery, and/or truth-seeking, and. a product (an end result) —one that includes mature reasoning, understanding, persuasion, and/or communication. Neither the process nor the product exists in a vacuum but instead ...
Teaching Argument for Critical Thinking and Writing: An Introduction
The author provides information and an example from a real classroom for teaching logical argument in a complex and effective manner. (Contains 1 figure.) Descriptors: Critical Thinking , Secondary Education , Writing (Composition) , Colleges , Universities , Instructional Effectiveness , Teaching Methods , Academic Achievement , College Faculty
4.2 Understanding and Composing Researched Arguments
Think about the appeals you learned about in Composition 1: logos, ethos, pathos, Kairos, and Stasis when selecting your evidence. Varying evidence types will help you vary the rhetorical appeals and create a more balanced argument and greater audience appeal. Appeals to readers' values: Effective arguments appeal to readers' emotions ...
Teaching Argument for Critical Thinking and Writing: An Introduction
Teaching Argument for Critical Thinking and Writing: An Introduction EN English Deutsch Français Español Português Italiano Român Nederlands Latina Dansk Svenska Norsk Magyar Bahasa Indonesia Türkçe Suomi Latvian Lithuanian český русский български العربية Unknown
15.11.1: How Arguments Work and the Argumentative Writing and Critical
Chapter 2: Reading to Figure out the Argument covers annotation and how to look out for common phrases that identify the elements of a complex argument according to the Toulmin model.; Chapter 3: Writing a Summary of Another Writer's Argument covers common phrases for analyzing an argument's structure.It includes Section 3.7: Writing a Short Summary of a Long Argument and Section 3.9 ...
Arguments in Context
Arguments in Context is a comprehensive introduction to critical thinking that covers all the basics in student-friendly language. Intended for use in a semester-long course, the text features classroom-tested examples and exercises that have been chosen to emphasize the relevance and applicability of the subject to everyday life. Three themes are developed as the text proceeds from argument ...
Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing
Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing is a brief yet versatile resource for teaching argument, persuasive writing, and research. It makes argument concepts clear and gives students strategies to move from critical thinking and analysis to crafting effective arguments. Comprehensive coverage of classic and contemporary approaches to argument — Aristotelian, Toulmin, Rogerian, visual ...
Teaching and Learning Argumentative Reading and Writing: A Review of
Using empirical studies of the teaching and learning of argumentative reading and writing conducted in grades K-12 and college writing classrooms, we delineate the assumptions that drive the two perspectives and their instructional consequences, arguing that researchers and teachers need an understanding of their assumptions about knowledge and ...
Teaching Argument
A diverse and inclusive intellectual community is critical to an exceptional education, scholarly innovation, and human creativity. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences is committed to actions and investments that foster welcoming environments where everyone feels empowered to achieve their greatest potential for learning, teaching, researching, and creating.
Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing: A Brief Guide to Argument
Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing: A Brief Guide to Argument, Edition 10 - Ebook written by Sylvan Barnet, Hugo Bedau, John O'Hara. Read this book using Google Play Books app on your PC, android, iOS devices. Download for offline reading, highlight, bookmark or take notes while you read Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing: A Brief Guide to Argument, Edition 10.
PDF Teaching Argument Writing, Grades 6-12
"Teaching Argument for Critical Thinking and Writing: An Introduction" by George ... Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper ... 1947-2009 Excellent student, colleague, and friend. Contents Foreword by Michael Smith ix Acknowledgments xiii Preface: Teaching Argument for Critical Thinking xv Introduction: Planning for ...
Full article: Supporting the Argumentative Writing of Students in
Argumentative Writing. Argumentative writing is not an easy communication task because it requires complex cognitive and linguistic skills (Nippold & Ward-Lonergan, Citation 2010).Argument is the essence of critical thinking that entails making a case to sustain a claim, identifying supporting evidence from multiple sources that connects the claim logically, using warrants that support the ...
A Guide to English: Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing
Critical thinking is one of the key goals and expectations of academic learning. Scholars in a range of fields (but especially philosophy, psychology, and education) have attempted to define what qualities make up what we call critical thinking, but one key aspect is the expectation that that we will master existing knowledge so that we are as well-positioned as we can be to revise existing ...
Teaching Argument Construction
Justine Kingsbury. [1]Most critical thinking textbooks tell students nothing about how to construct good arguments of their own. Their focus is on the identification and evaluation of other people's arguments—as you would expect, since they are after all critical thinking textbooks. Although teaching students how to evaluate arguments is ...
Discovering Arguments: An Introduction to Critical Thinking, Writing
Discovering Arguments: An Introduction to Critical Thinking, Writing, and Style, 4th edition. Published by ... watch on-demand, or listen at your leisure to expand your teaching strategies. Earn digital professional development badges for attending a live session. ... An Introduction to Critical Thinking, Writing, and Style, 4th edition ...
(PDF) Conceptualisation of Critical Literacy and Argumentative Writing
This action research examined the roles of writing instruction involving metacognitive and critical thinking strategy on the improvement of argumentative writing skills of college students in ...
Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing
Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writingis a brief yet versatile resource for teaching argument, persuasive writing, and research. It makes argument concepts clear and gives students strategies to move from critical thinking and analysis to crafting effective arguments. Comprehensive coverage of classic and contemporary approaches to argument ...
Using Critical Thinking in Essays and other Assignments
Critical thinking, as described by Oxford Languages, is the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgement. Active and skillful approach, evaluation, assessment, synthesis, and/or evaluation of information obtained from, or made by, observation, knowledge, reflection, acumen or conversation, as a guide to belief and action, requires the critical thinking process ...
Introduction
As you can see, analysis is a creative act. Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing ultimately help to structure your thinking. This means, you know how to read for different purposes, and articulate and defend your views using support or evidence. These skills will enable you to join the wider academic community of knowledge-building ...
Insight from the association between critical thinking and English
Introduction. English writing is an intricate problem-solving process that requires not only basic writing skills but also the capacity to imagine, make claims, be visionary, and provide proper supporting subarguments (Kirkland & Saunders, 1991; Bruning & Horn, 2010; Howell et al., 2018) for the claims, especially when the claims are argumentative.. Additionally, as a critical and versatile ...

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General Considerations

Effective arguments respond to their specific rhetorical situations.

Arguments can lie on a spectrum from truth-seeking to persuasion, and in academic contexts, there is sometimes a distinction between “argument” and persuasion.

Arguments can be implicit or explicit

Explicit arguments can benefit from acknowledging and incorporating counterarguments.

Students can strengthen their argumentative skills by reading and reverse-engineering model arguments effectively.

Academics across curricula work with argument, but the genres, types, and purposes of argument vary according to discipline.

Six Common Types of Claim*

Common Argumentative Structures

Strategies for the Classroom

Further Reading

4.2 Understanding and Composing Researched Arguments

Example: Can a statement of fact evolve into a strong argumentative thesis statement?

Activating an Inquiry-based Mindset for Creating Arguments

QUESTIONING HEURISTIC FOR INVENTING AN ARGUMENT [4]

Types of Arguments

Rogerian Argument

Toulmin Argument

TOULMIN MODEL [6]

Other Types of Academic Arguments

[8] Structuring Argument in Your Paper

organizing reasons effectively

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15.11.1: How Arguments Work and the Argumentative Writing and Critical Thinking Course Objectives

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Psychology in Everyday Life

Affordable strategies for critical thinking and academic argument.

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Instuctor's Resource Manual for Teaching Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing

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From Critical Thinking to Argument

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Insight from the association between critical thinking and English argumentative writing: catering to English learners’ writing ability

Atif Saleem