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Week 1 · Module overview

Week 1 — What Critical Thinking Is: Claims, Arguments & Explanations

Critical Thinking Free sample edition

Welcome to your Week 1 Start Here page.

Why this matters

A nursing student weighing a health headline and a business major reading a manager's memo about a schedule change both need to find exactly what is being claimed and what reasons are offered for it.

In plain language

This week is about noticing exactly what people ask you to believe and why. Critical thinking (the habit of checking a claim and its support before you accept it) is a set of moves you can learn, not a talent you either have or lack. You will learn to spot a claim (a sentence that is either true or false) and an argument (reasons offered to get you to accept a claim). You will also learn to tell an argument from an explanation (reasons why something everyone already accepts is so). By the end of the week you will find the reasons and the main claim in a short campus proposal, which is the first step before anyone can judge whether the reasons are any good.

  • This week: claims, arguments, explanations, indicator words, and the running question.
  • How they connect: this is the foundation; every later week starts by finding the argument.
  • Where we're going next: Week 2, Analyzing Arguments.

Focus

What exactly is someone asking you to believe, and what reasons are they offering for it?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

  • [ ] sort sentences into claims and non-claims
  • [ ] find an argument's conclusion and stated reasons
  • [ ] tell an argument from an explanation with the doubt test
  • [ ] find the conclusion when no indicator word appears

To-do

Plan your week

  1. Read Chapter 1 (about 40 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
  2. Work the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes) and the practice set (about 20 minutes).
  3. Do the Argument Workshop (about 90 minutes), the discussion, and the assignment.
  4. Take the quiz.

This week's checkpoint: find the conclusion and the three stated reasons in the running question's newsletter passage, and say whether it argues or explains.

You've got this

Take it in order, and ask your instructor if a step snags.

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