Course Instructor: David Stamos

Contact: dstamos@yorku.ca

This is a skills-based course which focuses on skills that are essential for most of your university courses (and consequently can be expected to raise your grades in those courses). Specifically this means: conceptual analysis, fallacy analysis, argument structure analysis, premise analysis, essay style.

1) S. Morris Engel (2000). With Good Reason. 6^th edition. Bedford/St. Martin’s. ISBN 978-1457695957

https://store.macmillanlearning.com/ca/product/With-Good-Reason/p/0312157584?searchText=Engel

2) Chris MacDonald and Lewis Vaughn (2016). The Power of Critical Thinking. 4^th Cdn. edition. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-901868-0.

OR: Chopped ed. ISBN 978-0-19-901536-8 (this one saves you money!). Available in

the bookstore as: York University Custom Edition: The Power of Critical Thinking. Chris

MacDonald and Lewis Vaughn. (Make sure you buy the red edition for this course.)

Conceptual Analysis Assignment (20%) – midway in the fall semester

Fallacy Test (15%) – at the end of the fall semester, and it’s open book/notes

Passage Analysis Assignment (20%) – roughly mid-way in the winter semester

Article Analysis Assignment (25%) – at the end of the winter semester

Participation (20%) – based on classroom attendance and weekly homework (each of which is short and graded exclusively on completeness not on quality)

This is an in-class course. When you register for this course, it’s for a three-hour time slot. The tutorial is included in that (so you don’t register for a tutorial). Some of our classes will have more time spent on teaching, while others will have more time spent on taking up homework and on classroom discussion.

Moodle is used for this course for posting announcements, skeleton notes for the entire course, pdfs, and grades.

The ability to apply to other courses the knowledge and skills learned/acquired in this course.

As this is a primarily skills-based course, not a primarily knowledge-based course, much of our class time is spent on applications, practice, and discussing homework. This is why the Participation grade, which is based exclusively on attendance and homework, is 20%. Consequently it is very easy to get 20/20 for this portion of the course, and to get 0/20 if you treat don’t come to class and don’t submit homework. You therefore need to be able to commit yourself to attending class. If you cannot do this, you should take this course at some other time (but you should take this course), the earlier the better.