Course Instructor Contact: David Stamos at 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. I have not ordered this book through the bookstore. We will be using this book in the second quarter of the course.

This is for the purchase of a pdf copy (roughly only $6.00):

https://monsterbookstore.com/product/ebook-pdf-with-good-reason-an-

introduction-to-informal-fallacies-sixth-edition/

This is for the rent or purchase of a paper copy:

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

2) Chris MacDonald and Lewis Vaughn (2016). York University Custom Edition: The Power of Critical Thinking. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-901536-8. We will be using this book for the fourth quarter of the course.

This book will be available in the bookstore as a paper copy (make sure you buy the edition for this course). An e-book version will also be available through the bookstore.

Conceptual Analysis Assignment (20%) – at the end of the first quarter

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

Passage Analysis Assignment (20%) – at the end of the third quarter

Article Analysis Assignment (25%) – at the end of the fourth quarter

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.