Critical Thinking and Assumptions

In the middle of last semester, I had an interesting conversation with another writing consultant. The topic of our conversation was the difference between an assumption and a presumption. Although when I check The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, it does, in the second entry, give assumption as a synonym for presumption, when philosophers make arguments, assumption is the term of choice. 

Most of you probably have a colloquial sense of what an assumption is, indeed, most of you have probably been warned about the dangers of assuming anything. When you make an argument or when you assess an argument, you should probably avoid relying on your colloquial intuitions. 

Assumptions can be true or false; they can be strong or weak. They will be found in almost every argument you will ever encounter. Thus, while making an ass of oneself and others, could on many occasions result from making a naive assumption, it certainly is not inevitable.  

What is an assumption? 

This was the question put to me by the other writing consultant. After thinking back to my Logic 101 class, my response was the following: "An assumption is an unstated premise." Fairly simple, right? 

We know that in college classrooms "argument" does not mean "screaming match" or "fight." Rather, when you make an argument for a class, you conclude something on the basis of evidence and good reasoning. The premises are used to support the conclusion. Sometimes, if the argument is sufficiently complex, you may have more than one conclusion. In such arguments, you may have a sub-conclusion that also a premise because it is used to support a main conclusion. So, premises support a conclusion, and an assumption is an unstated premise. 

To illustrate these abstractions, I'm going to refer to some of what I said to my writing consultant colleague. Before our discussion began, we had just noticed someone eating chicken soup in the graduate student office, at which point I said, "He must have a cold." My colleague confirmed my conclusion. "Yeah, he told earlier today that he wasn't feeling well."

This exchange, or an exchange very similar to this one, happens a million times a day. But what exactly are the rhetorical components that are important for critical thinking? There are premises and a conclusion, and of course, there are assumptions as well. To make the relationship between these entities explicit, let's look at the following schema.

Conclusion: "He must have a cold."

How did I arrive at this conclusion? Well, I saw the person in question eating a bowl of chicken soup. So let's make this premise explicit.

Premise 1: "He is eating a bowl of chicken soup."

At this point, something in the reasoning chain is missing. How do I connect premise 1 to the conclusion? There are many ways, but the most definitive would be to use the following premise. 

Premise 2: "If a person is eating a bowl of chicken soup, then he has a cold." 

Premise 2 is false, but it will help illustrate my point about assumptions. The point is that I didn't actually include another premise when I drew my conclusion. My argument, if I had written it down in standard premise and conclusion form would have looked like this:

1. He is eating a bowl of chicken soup.
2. Thus, he must have a cold. 

The consultant I was speaking with understood my reasoning chain without the additional premise. When I am speaking to someone in a colloquial manner, it would be awkward, not to mention cognitively problematic, to explicitly state every premise in every argument I make. For this reason, I, and basically everyone else in the world, will use a lot of assumptions when we argue. Let's include the assumption in our schema to reinforce this idea visually. 

1. He is eating a bowl of chicken soup.

Assumption, unstated premise: If a person is eating a bowl of chicken soup, then he has a cold

3. Thus, he has a cold. 

In many of the texts you read for your classes, the assumptions will be more controversial. Controversy can lead to emotion, and emotion can lead to a person wanting to make an argument appear more cogent than it actually is. 

If the writing consultant I was talking to had asked me to clarify my assumption, and if I had clarified it with premise 2, then my conclusion would not follow. I would need to modify my assumption in order to get a cogent reasoning chain. I might modify my assumption by making it more narrow e.g., "If a person is eating a bowl of chicken soup, then it is likely he has a cold." 

I might modify it by including more information in it e.g., "If a person is eating a bowl of chicken soup during the cold and flu season in Charleston, IL, then it is likely that he has a cold."

 An essential part of critical thinking is to ask yourself about the assumptions a writer or speaker makes. If a writer's or speaker's assumption is weak, then his conclusion will be weak. Keep this in mind when you analyze an argument.

Critical Thinking: Batman vs Spiderman

Critical thinking is the gem that every teacher looks for in a student paper, and for many students this is the largest hurdle to overcome.

If we look at critical thinking as defined by the National Council for Critical Thinking, then it "is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action."

Sounds tough, right!

Actually, it isn't all that difficult.

For example: "Is Batman tougher than Spiderman?" is a question that can spawn a lively debate between two critically thinking adolescent boys.

Batman has the cool cars and gadgets, but Spiderman has the superhuman strength. Spiderman has those cool Spidey web-shooters, but Batman has the cooler, more intimidating suit.

Who will win? Check out the youtube video above to find the answer to this age old problem:

Beyond the playground debates, like the example above, this type of skillful analysis is what teachers look for in students' papers.

It is actually the best part of writing papers when done thoroughly. Critical thinking not only provides a student with an introduction, body and conclusion for a class paper, but it also provides an opportunity to ask oneself those tough questions that just don't come up in our mundane routines.

For example, if a teacher assigns an argumentative essay asking students to choose between the superpower of flight or invisibility, then students have many questions and avenues to consider.

In order to make an educated choice, we will need to consider and discuss the parameters of each power. Then students will have to consider what actions the powers will enable them to perform. After mulling over these details, we will need to consider our own values in order to make a suitable match to the superpower.

After-all, we do not want to get a decision of this magnitude wrong and then have major regrets!

The same goes for more conventional essay topics. Topics like gun-control, the legalization of gay-marriage, or the separation of church and state. These are the topics we must take seriously, and discuss as thoroughly as possible in our essays.

Critical thinking is how we learn, develop our own ideas, and essentially become the superheroes we  want to be.  It is also our superpower to writing successful essays.

A Luddite and His Dictionaries

At some indeterminate moment in the past few years, I began to think of my computer as an elder colleague who has possession of a magic lamp. As long as I treat this colleague with a modicum of respect, my colleague will intercede on my behalf, and my wish will be granted.

I never see him, but I know the genie must be powerful because my wishes are multifarious and kaleidoscopic. One minute I may wish to know what time Booth closes on Saturday. Having satisfied that desire, I may wish to watch a chess match between Garry Kasparov and Judit Polgar with voice-over move annotations. Perhaps, after viewing a purely cerebral contest, I may develop a taste for something a little more physical. Twelve seconds later, I'm watching Michael Jordan put up a 46-7-5 line against The Pistons in game 3 of the 1989 Eastern Conference Finals. (For the record, the shot Jordan makes at the end of regulation is the most underrated game-winner in his career, and maybe in NBA history.)

All this the genie has accomplished, yet it hasn't even begun to show what its capable of.

• You wanna bet a horse in The Kentucky Derby?  Your wish is my command.
• You wanna shop for a new bed? Your wish is my command. 
• You wanna say goodnight to your children when you're in Oslo and they're in Montreal? Your wish is my command.

We've gotten used to hearing those five words, haven't we?

There is nothing inherently wrong with using computers for many of the tasks we use them for. However, there is a risk that our reliance on silicon-based technology will become insidious, especially for those of us who want to become better writers.

An important part of writing is composing sentences, and an important part of composing sentences is combining words in distinct, meaningful ways The more words you know, the more sentences you can create. The more sentences you can create, the more thoughts you can convey in your writing. The more thoughts you can convey in your writing, the more conceptual distinctions you will be able to express in your writing. The more conceptual distinctions you are able to express in your writing, the clearer you will think. And isn't thinking clearly an intrinsic good? Maybe not. Still, I would suggest that thinking clearly is strongly correlated with As. 

Whatever reason you use to justify the goodness of thinking clearly, thinking clearly requires strong diction. But how will you learn words that you don't know? How will you find the perfect word to express a thought that took weeks to ripen? 

One tactic is to rub that magic lamp, to make another wish. An easy tactic, if you ask me.

When our wish is new and ardent, we may prefer an obsequious genie who does our bidding without complaint, but, in my experience, such complaisance eventually begins to do more harm than good. You begin to yearn for the slow struggle of overcoming a challenge. Visiting Thesaurus.com is not going to get the job done.

A student looking up the word "lazy," in an online thesaurus may not fully appreciate the subtle differences which exist between each entry. Thus, to use an online thesaurus to find a couple of ill-fitting and contorted synonyms for the sake of semantic variety, in many cases, will backfire. Your paper may end up sounding worse than it did before you used the online thesaurus. 

It is an honorable goal: You want to vary the vocabulary in your paper; you want to make your paper more interesting to read by employing all the spices the English language hides behind its cabinet doors. But just like a chef requires more than a white fluffy hat to be a chef, a writer requires more than powerful magic lamp to be a writer.

Allow me to suggest a better way: Use a dictionary, a collegiate dictionary for the road, the Shorter Oxford for your apartment.

Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that you can't look up a word you don't know. True.

But, surely, during your many academic engagements (the novel you're reading in English class, the essay from The Wall Street Journal you're reading for economics class, the discussion you have with your Philosophy professor) you occasionally come across an unfamiliar word. When it happens, you can either keep a list, say, with a ten word limit, and then go look up all ten when you find a convenient time to do so, or you can look up a word immediately after encountering it. 

Now, again, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that the genie has a dictionary also. You're thinking that it would be a gross inefficiency to take the time to look a word up in a print dictionary, when rubbing the lamp is so much quicker. I'll grant that there are times and circumstances when using an online dictionary is appropriate (especially when you need help pronouncing foreign phrases or proper names), but don't rely on it. 

Take a trip, take the scenic route. Riffle the pages of the 11th edition. I bet you'll learn more in two months than the genie taught you in two years. 

Productive Procrastination

Seeing the words together--productive and procrastination--seems like a lie. Is it productive to procrastinate? You're not getting any work done by putting it off.

And now the proverbial "or are you?"

As I began this post, I wasn't practicing what I'm about to preach. I started this days ahead of time, getting cracking just a couple days after I wrote my last post. But then I stopped a sentence in.

"Why?" you ask befuddled.

"Because," I begin wildly, "I can!" But then I realize that that is not the answer you want, nor the answer that you need. But truthfully, deep down, you know the answer: I just didn't feel like continuing. I could give a multitude of excuses like how I began to doubt how much I wanted to talk about procrastination or how I had to combat a zombie that wandered into the writing center without a paper to pick brains about, only an insatiable hunger to pick my brains out. While I would rejoice at the opportunity to survive the zombie apocalypse, I must shamefully admit that that is not the case. The reason why I did not finish the post right then and there was because I lost interest and felt just a little bit lazy.

You're looking at me scornfully, and I can understand why, but let me defend myself. As you can see, I did not simply neglect this piece. I'm typing away at it this very moment. I didn't forget about it. I just wanted some time away from it, away from a keyboard and a blinking cursor, away from the pressure of writing a spectacular post that will make you forget everything you knew about procrastination.

I did it just to prove a point.

Procrastination can be a valuable tool. I see that quizzical cocking of the head to the side--my pug does that when I say, "treat." But Pavlovian behavior aside, I'll repeat myself: procrastination can be a valuable tool. We all do it but I don't think we realize the power we wield by doing so, er, or not doing so.

Time away from a paper doesn't necessarily mean we should block it out of our consciousness altogether. In fact, I argue that it's downright impossible to forget about a paper we're working on unless of course we have several other papers weighing down on our shoulders like Atlas holding a big paper mache globe but instead of countries there's words or huge expanses of white space and...

But I digress. We think about our assignments even when we're away from them, and that's a beautiful thing. We think of all the different ways of wording a sentence or other avenues of research we can take in our particular piece. We think of these things while walking from class to class, taking a shower, or playing a gentlemanly game of croquet. We're away from the piece so some of the pressures are relieved. By mentally reworking the paper, we're not obligated to set any of this in stone, or ink for that matter. Then when we return to the piece we can come back with fresh ideas and a fresh pair of eyes like we're coming back to an old friend who could or could not use an overhaul makeover. Then we can give it highlights or snip the hair here and there--make it more readable and coherent.

Word of warning: when one procrastinates, do so in moderation. Do not wait until the last minute to return to the piece or you won't have enough time to perform said makeover and the pressure will be on to make it all pretty. Then you'll screw up the makeover haircut and nobody will want to look at it.

Successful Research: Note Taking

Brainstorming ideas and outlining are strategies that can help in organizing a paper. But how do you even get there in the first place? When reviewing multiple sources for a paper of any kind, taking careful, detailed notes will not only help you find the support that you’ll need in your paper, but also help with the organization of a draft. Here are a few helpful ideas on note taking when dealing with source material.

How Do You Take Notes From a Text You Can’t Write On?

- Sticky notes: Sticky notes can help mark useful passages that you want to later reference in your paper. Along with marking a particular point within the book, writing a word or phrase on sticky notes can help you connect and summarize the points that are important. I don’t want to spend actual money on sticky notes so I use small pieces of paper to mark the spot in a book. See, you don’t have to buy them if you don’t want to!

- Taking notes on paper: It’s helpful to take detailed notes of main points that you might later use when drafting your paper. If you’re not a detailed note taker, then just writing a page number on paper or a particular quote will help jog your memory.

- Note cards: Jotting down quotes and main ideas along with the reference information on notecards can make ideas easier to locate when drafting a paper. This way, the information is all in one place, and can even be useful when deciding how to organize the ideas for a draft. Note cards allow you to visually shuffle information.

Taking Notes On Printed Sources

- Highlighting and underlining: Highlighting and underlining can help you reference particular words or phrases that you plan to expand upon in a draft. Making notes in the margins will make it easier for you to pick out points that you want to use in your paper. These notes can later become points that you want to make in your paper.

Starting the search for sources early can only benefit your paper in the end because you’ll have time to effectively take notes. Though the process can take more time, making sure that you pick out points within research to support your ideas will only help when beginning to draft your paper.

Essay Exams, The Basic Skills Test, & "Writing on the Spot: Essay Exams" Workshop

The EIU Writing Center doesn’t only provide feedback about academic papers or scholarship essays. Writing consultants there can help you with any document you've drafted, or they can help you get the writing process started by having a conversation about the assignment and brainstorming ideas.

As the DEN has informed readers about recently, to be accepted into any teacher education programs at Eastern, students must first take and pass all parts of the Basic Skills Test. Because most programs have become more rigid with class scheduling during the sophomore and junior years of college, people recommend that students take the test in their first year or sophomore year of college.

What does this have to do with writing, you might ask?

A lot since there are writing assignments on the exam.

The Basic Skills test is required for all Education majors because it is used to asses that prospective teachers have the analytical and communication skills that they can implement in the classroom. This test consists mainly of essay tests. So being prepared and knowing the process of writing a timed essay is crucial for success on the Basic Skills Test. Getting ample practice before the big day of the test is very important, especially since students can take the test no more than five times.

On Thursday, October 6, 2011, the Writing Center will provide a workshop titled "Writing on the Spot: Essay Exams" at 3:30 p.m. in the Writing Center (3110 Coleman Hall). This interactive session will focus on strategies that will help students on the typical essay exams they write in college, and it also could help Education majors who are concerned about the Basic Skills Test.

In addition, last spring this blog provided some advice about the challenge of in-class/timed essays in the post "Essay Exam Writing Tips."

Mid-term exams are approaching and the Basic Skills Test is important if you're an Ed major, so checking out the link above and attending the workshop tomorrow will better prepare you for what's ahead.

Recommended WAC Resource: Engaging Ideas

Last month the second edition of what some people refer to as the "WAC Bible" was published. Engaging Ideas now has a new edition.

If someone were to ask me what I think is the single best WAC resource out there, my recommendation would be Engaging Ideas: The Professor's Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom by John C. Bean. It's an outstanding resource.

Since the book's first edition in 1996, colleges worldwide have used this text as the basis for professional development workshops because it offers different ideas, approaches, and methods for using writing as a tool for critical thinking and reflective engagement in diverse disciplines.

Bean is a Consulting Professor of Writing and Assessment at Seattle University, and he's the author and co-author of a number of writing textbooks. As part of the second edition's "About the Author" section relates, Bean "has done extensive consulting across the United States and Canada on writing across the curriculum, critical thinking, and university outcomes assessment," and "In 2010 his article "Messy Problems and Lay Audiences: Teaching Critical Thinking within the Finance Curriculum" (coauthored with colleagues from finance and economics) won the 2008 McGraw Hill-Magna Publications Award for the year's best scholarly work on teaching and learning" (xxi).

Like the first version of Engaging Ideas, the second edition provides a progression from why to how. The book has four parts with sixteen chapters. Below are the chapter titles to show what the text covers:

1. Using Writing to Promote Thinking: A Busy Professor's Guide to the Whole Book
2. How Writing is Related to Critical Thinking
3. Helping Writers Think Rhetorically
4. Using a Range of Genres to Extend Critical Thinking and Deepen Learning
5. Dealing with Issues of Grammar and Correctness
6. Formal Writing Assignments
7. Informal, Exploratory Writing Activities
8. Designing Tasks to Promote Active Thinking and Learning
9. Helping Students Read Difficult Texts
10. Using Small Groups to Coach Thinking and Teach Disciplinary Argument
11. Bringing More Critical Thinking into Lectures and Discussions
12. Enhancing Learning and Critical Thinking in Essay Exams
13. Designing and Sequencing Assignments to Teach Undergraduate Research
14. Using Rubrics to Develop and Apply Grading Criteria
15. Coaching the Writing Process and Handling the Paper Load
16. Writing Comments on Students' Papers

While the book is geared more toward those of us who teach at the college level, the text would also benefit Education majors who could implement a writing across the curriculum/writing in the disciplines approach in their classrooms.

A Question of Thesis

It's the beginning of the semester, which means a fresh batch of writing assignments threateningly leering over our shoulders and breathing down our necks like paper trolls. As unpleasant of an image as it might appear, this is the common view after sitting down and taking a second glance at the instructor's syllabus, regardless of whether a student is just beginning his or her college experience or eagerly inching towards graduation day.

The first thought the student may have is how am I going to finish all of this? The harder question comes when the student actually begins his or her essay: Where to begin? Often, just starting an essay becomes the most strenuous part, regardless of the writer's level of preparedness. The thesis is a writer's argument, the genesis of his entire paper. Without it, the paper lacks focus and even purpose.

In the essay "What Tutoring Is: Models and Strategies" from Donald A. McAndrew and Thomas J. Reigstad's book Tutoring Writing: A Practical Guide for Conferences, the authors identify a few strategies for responding to "high-order concerns," or HOCs (42). Thesis development is considered a high-order concern particularly because of how much of the paper depends on the thesis. Without a thesis, a paper buckles and collapses.

One suggestion that McAndrew and Reigstad makes for combating the no-thesis blues is to "create a headline or bumper sticker." The authors argue that "either of these requires that the writer find one thing that is central to the piece and say something about it." Suggestions include a subject like "Causes of the Civil War" or even a bumper sticker-like phrase like "_______ Is Not a Family Value" (44).

One of the reasons why the headline/bumper sticker tactic would work is that it's such an "out-of-the-box" idea that the uniqueness itself might spark the critical thinking necessary for building a clear and concise thesis. Another reason (and why I find it so appealing) is that its background in journalism and creativity might lead those of other disciplines to feel more comfortable in crafting an essay that depends so much on a thesis.

McAndrew and Reigstad list numerous other thesis-generating strategies, but the headline/bumper sticker one seems so out there that students could benefit from discovering less-orthodox methods of combating the paper trolls that await writers from the beginning of the semester until the end of finals week.

Why You Should Actually Attend Readings

No doubt you've seen advertisements about readings being held throughout campus. Perhaps you've gone to a few that relate to your class work, or whose topics interested you. But have you ever considered how attending readings and presentations may impact your own writing?

The truth is, hearing a paper read aloud is completely different from reading it silently to yourself. (This is, in fact, a great proofreading skill.) When listening to someone read aloud, you get a sense of flow and rhythm, an idea of how words sound. If you pay close attention, this can affect how you yourself put words and sentences together—pattern yourself off of the patterns of others. It's okay to take inspiration from others, as long as you avoid outright plagiarism.

It also helps to attend readings and presentations that you otherwise wouldn't attend. For example: if you are an Education major with an English concentration, perhaps you should attend a reading about plate tectonics. Sounds boring, right? But just think—not all of the writing in the world revolves around teaching English. There's a lot you can take away from a geology essay. Use of terminology, for example; or the way the presenter may take information that is otherwise boring to you, and make it fun and engaging (believe me, this actually happens). If you're going to be teaching English to a room full of high schoolers who don't care about the symbology of the letter "A" in The Scarlet Letter, you'll need to engage them somehow.

Voilà! Any reading, any presentation, can help you with your own writing. You just have to pay attention—if not to the subject matter, then to the way it's read, or the way the presenter delivers the information. This may mean adding a few more "to-do's" onto your already-busy schedule, but believe me, it pays off in the long run. And who knows—you just may have some fun. (Really!)

Standards and Expectations from Engaged Writers, Dynamic Disciplines

In a book that was published in 2006 titled Engaged Writers, Dynamic Disciplines: Research on the Academic Writing Life, Chris Thaiss and Terry Myers Zawacki present, as the back cover relates, the conclusions of a "four-year, crossdisciplinary study of faculty and students from a wide range of majors" that "demonstrate[s] that academic disciplines are dynamic spaces that accommodate a variety of alternative styles and visions."

While Thaiss and Myers Zawacki offer a detailed portrait of the ways writing takes place in diverse majors, they begin their book with three core principles that might help students understand where professors are coming from. In this post I thought I'd present the three principles for reflection and discussion.

Thaiss and Myers Zawacki claim that "regardless of differences among disciplines and individual teachers" (5) professors expect:

1. "Clear evidence in writing that the writer(s) have been persistent, open-minded, and disciplined in study" (5).
2. "The dominance of reason over emotions or sensual perception" (5).
3. "An imagined reader who is coolly rational, reading for information, and intending to formulate a reasoned response" (7).

The first principle relates to how college classes depend on strong reading and careful thinking. As the authors relate, "academics are invariably harsh toward any student or scholar who hasn't done the background reading, who isn't prepared to talk formally or off the cuff about the subject of the writing, and whose writing doesn't show careful attention to the objects of study and reflective thought about them" (5).

In other words, students or scholars need to show that they know the conversations going on in that discipline or subject, and they need take time to distill what it means to them through discussion, writing papers, WebCT posts, etc.

What the second principle connects to, for me at least, is that while students may have strong opinions, they also must support those ideas with evidence, reasoning, examples, and details that make sense to a wider audience. While the authors' own study details a Professor of Nursing who promotes the use of emotions and experiences as a means to understand the challenges of the profession, even then a writer is expected to be "a careful, fair student and analyst of competing positions" (6), which also connects to how the authors detail principle 3 in terms that "all academic writing is 'argumentative' in its perception of a reader who may object or disagree" since "the writer's effort to anticipate and allay these potential objections is also part of a broadly 'argumentative' ethos" (7).

So with all that information related above, what do you think based on your own careful reading and critical thinking? [see principle 1]

Do these principles seem true to you based on your experience as a student and/or a professor?