The Basics of Critical Thinking

This book defines and teaches critical thinking in a way all students can understand through simple explanations, diagrams, and short, engaging activities. Although this book teaches common argument forms, its primary focus is identifying and evaluating evidence – the very basis of critical thinking. Most propaganda, advertising schemes, legal trickery, and bad science are not the result of complex arguments; they are the result of half-truths and simple arguments. Students who successfully complete this book will have a fundamental set of critical thinking skills they can use their entire lives. This full colour, 152 page book is reproducible and contains the answer key.

CONTENTS

• What Is Critical Thinking? 
• Conclusions and Decisions 
• Beliefs and Claims 
• Finding (Identifying) Evidence 
• Evaluating Evidence 
• Inferring and Inferences 
• Facts and Opinions 
• Facts and Probable Truths 
• False and Probably False 
• Facts, Probably True, and Probably False 
• Venn Diagrams
• Logical Connectives 
• Advertising 
• Agreements and Contracts 
• Common Errors in Reasoning 
• Arguments 
• Valid and Invalid Arguments
• Fallacies 
• Analogy Argument