Week 6 · Assignment: Traditional alternative (no AI)

Week 6 — Words Doing the Work: Testing Wording, Shifts, and Fuzzy Terms — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Critical Thinking Free sample edition

Traditional alternative (no AI), unpublished. In the course this is a separate assignment that ships unpublished beside the adaptive assignment: same objective, no AI. An instructor who prefers it publishes it and unpublishes or deletes the adaptive one, as the note at its top says.

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

Assignment 6 of the term — rewrite slanted wording in neutral words, catch a feature that slides between parts and a whole, make a vague word precise, and explain what a word does and does not tell you to someone new to the subject.

This week you learned four kinds of definition, the difference between a vague word and an ambiguous one, equivocation, the fallacies of composition and division, and how loaded wording can carry a verdict while every fact stays true. In this assignment you work four short problems on two illustrative texts, interpret each one, and explain a fuzzy word 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 an illustrative job ad for a café, with no real café behind it: "Join our fast-paced team! Hours are flexible. Each shift is 6 hours, and new staff work 4 shifts a week at 15 dollars an hour. Every barista on our team has won a latte-art award, so our café serves the best coffee in the city."

Your second text is an illustrative neighborhood newsletter, with no real neighborhood behind it: "Our neighborhood is generous: 48 of our 120 households gave to the park fund. Our association is the most active in the city, so every one of our members must be an active volunteer."

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

The ad says each shift is 6 hours and new staff work 4 shifts a week. How many hours a week does a new staff member work?
Using the weekly hours from Problem 1, how many dollars does a new staff member earn in a week at 15 dollars an hour?
The newsletter says 48 of its 120 households gave to the park fund. What percentage of the households gave?
Of the same 120 households, how many did not give to the park fund?

Beside each answer, add one brief interpretation:

Problem 1: rewrite "fast-paced" and "flexible" in plain, neutral words, name the device each phrase uses, and say what verdict each one carries.
Problem 2: name the fallacy in the ad's last sentence, and explain whether the feature it moves is the kind that passes between the parts and the whole.
Problem 3: say whether "generous" is vague or ambiguous, write a precising definition of "generous" for this newsletter, and say whether the percentage you found meets your definition.
Problem 4: name the fallacy in the newsletter's last sentence and explain which way the feature moves, then write the message to the neighbor described below.

Explain it to a non-expert

A neighbor who has never studied logic reads the newsletter and asks, "It says we're generous, so nearly everyone gave, right?" Write a 3–5 sentence message that explains in everyday words why "generous" is a fuzzy word, reports the percentage you found and how many households did not give, and names one limit: the word "generous" carries a judgment that the figures alone do not settle. Explain any technical term in everyday words. More than one good answer is possible.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a gym ad that says "Our gym is never crowded." Model answer: "'Crowded' is a fuzzy word with no exact line, so the ad can sound true to the owner and false to you. It also does not say which hours it means; a quiet morning and a packed evening can both happen. Before you join, visit at the hour you would really go."

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

Show your arithmetic, write each neutral rewrite and definition out in full, and quote the sentences you use. A reader should be able to reproduce every number you report, and find every quoted sentence in the ad or the newsletter, 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 neighbor, explaining why "generous" is a fuzzy word, reporting the percentage and how many households did not give, and naming one limit; and
a one-line restatement of the values you used (the shift length, the shifts a week, the hourly wage, and the households that gave out of all households), 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 two-column sketch that sets each original phrase beside its neutral rewrite with a short note that says the verdict in words. 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, the rewrites, and the writing yourself, without a chatbot or other AI tool. Quote the ad and the newsletter 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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