Week 1 — Finding the Argument: Claims, Reasons, and Counts — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Assignment 1 of the term — find the parts of a real-feeling argument the way a careful reader does, and explain them to someone new to the subject.

This week you learned to tell a claim from a question, a command, and a report of a feeling, to find an argument's conclusion and stated reasons, and to tell an argument from an explanation. In this assignment you work four short problems on two illustrative texts, interpret each one, and explain the newsletter's argument to someone who has never studied critical thinking. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Argument Workshop practise the same ideas from other angles.

The task

Your first text is the running question's illustrative campus-newsletter passage, which has no real author: "The campus library should stay open around the clock during finals week. During finals week many students need a quiet, safe place to study late at night. The library is the only quiet, safe, well-lit study space on campus large enough to meet that need. Keeping the library open overnight for the five nights of finals week costs about 1,600 dollars in staff wages." It has 1 conclusion and 3 stated reasons. Your second text is an illustrative ad for a coffee maker, with no real company behind it: "Tired of slow mornings? This coffee maker brews a full pot in 4 minutes. Order yours this week. We love the smell of it every morning. It is the best coffee maker you can buy." Two of its 5 sentences are claims.

Work these four problems, showing your arithmetic and quoting the sentences you use:

1. The running question's newsletter passage has 1 conclusion and 3 stated reasons. How many claims does the passage hold in all?
2. The newsletter's cost figure assumes 2 staff working 8 hours a night for 5 nights at 20 dollars an hour. What is the overnight staffing cost in dollars?
3. The illustrative coffee-maker ad has 5 sentences, and 2 of them are claims. How many of its sentences are not claims?
4. In the newsletter passage, 3 of the 4 claims are stated reasons. What fraction of the passage's claims are stated reasons, written as a decimal?

Beside each answer, add one brief interpretation:

• Problem 1: name the conclusion and the three stated reasons in your own words, and explain how you found the conclusion even though no indicator word marks it.
• Problem 2: say whether the cost sentence is a premise or the conclusion, and run the doubt test to decide whether the passage argues or explains.
• Problem 3: label each of the ad's five sentences as a claim, a question, a command, or a report of a feeling; name the claim that the question or the command carries without saying it; and explain why "It is the best coffee maker you can buy" is a claim even though it is an opinion.
• Problem 4: explain why finding an argument's conclusion and reasons is not the same as agreeing with it, then write the message to your roommate described below.

Explain it to a non-expert

Your roommate glances at the newsletter and says, "That's only someone's opinion, so there's nothing to analyze." Write a 3–5 sentence message that explains in everyday words why an opinion is still a claim whose reasons can be judged, names the passage's conclusion and its three stated reasons, reports that 3 of the 4 claims are stated reasons, and names one limit: finding the parts does not show whether the reasons are good or settle the question. Explain any technical term in everyday words. More than one good answer is possible, and you do not need to take a side on the library question.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a neighbor reading a block-party flyer that says, "The block party should move to the park. The street floods when it rains." Model answer: "This flyer is trying to convince us of something, so it is an argument. What it wants us to accept is that the party should move to the park, and the reason it gives is that the street floods. Spotting that reason does not tell us whether the park is free that day, so we would still need to check before deciding."

Use that pattern for the newsletter, with your own wording and evidence.

Show your arithmetic and quote the sentences you use. A reader should be able to reproduce every number you report, and find every quoted sentence in the passage or the ad, without guessing which values, steps, or sentences you used.

Deliverables

Submit a single report containing:

• the four answers, each with the arithmetic shown and the brief interpretation the task names for that problem;
• your message to the roommate, explaining why an opinion is still a claim, naming the conclusion and the three stated reasons, reporting that 3 of the 4 claims are stated reasons, and naming one limit; and
• a one-line restatement of the values you used (the passage's conclusion and stated reasons, the cost inputs, and the ad's sentence and claim counts), so your answers are reproducible.

Keep it to roughly one page. Clear and correct beats long.

Choose how you show it. Present your report as written text, or as a recorded audio or video explanation of about three minutes with a transcript, or as a labelled sketch that marks the passage's conclusion and stated reasons with a short note. Every form is graded by the same scoring criteria. Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text.

How you'll be graded

The full analytic rubric is attached to this assignment in Canvas.

Academic integrity and AI use

This version is designed to be completed without AI: do the computations, the interpretations, and the writing yourself, without a chatbot or other AI tool. Quote the passage and the ad only as they are printed here, word for word. Submitting AI-generated work as your own, or copying another student's work, is an integrity violation under the course policy.

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