With regard to Bonnie's post, I feel that critical thinking is not the same
as the ability to present an argument. The former exists to some extent in
all of us, and I doubt that it can be deliberately taught as a skill without
getting pretty condescending. It is dependent on our personality, culture,
and exposure to a variety of experience and points of view.

The ability to carry an argument requires good language skills, first and
foremost. I do not mean getting the article, tenses and prepositions right,
I mean control of a wide vocabulary. In an academic setting it means being
able to look at both sides of an argument, to describe competing points of
view, and then explain convincingly why one is superior or truer than
others. Even ancient Roman rhetoric had the Refutatio where the orator at
least pretended to present a view contrary to his own, only to then take it
apart.

Steve

On Wed, Jul 9, 2008 at 11:42 AM, Bonnie Odiorne <bonniesophia at sbcglobal.net>
wrote:


> I'm very interested in writing and critical thinking at the moment. Stay

> with me here: this may get a little convoluted. Don't get me wrong: I don't

> for a heartbeat think that most ESOL students, even fairly "advanced" ones

> who might be taking college courses, have the language capacity to express

> clearly and concisely the critical thinking that may be going on in their

> heads but they just can't express. I'm thinking of agency and writing, and

> got into a bit of a conundrum in an English class recently. I'd always

> though an "argument" paper was one in which one stated a position and

> supported it with evidence, documented, or from personal experience. It

> turns out that the author of our text thought the argumentative paper is one

> that seeks to convince someone to change a thought or value or to do

> something, and the writer can use many strategies to effect this task.

>

>     So I'm wondering whether critical thinking is taught in how I used the

> argument, the abiity to connect thoughts, support them, and come to a

> sustainable conclusion: could be called expository, the presentation of

> information, that could demonstrate many levels of critical thinking. The

> argumentative or persuasive paper, on the other hand, would be to convince,

> and therein lies agency, I think, the "active" part of "activism": actually

> doing something to change a situation.

>

>     I'd relate these ideas in writing/thinking to Bloom's Taxonomy, and the

> verbs that are associated with various positions on the pyramid. For a good

> link to that, go to

> http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/slatta/hi216/learning/bloom.htm

>

> Just thinking out loud, critically or not.... :-)

>

> Bonnie Odiorne

>

>

>

>

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-- 
Steve Kaufmann
www.lingq.com
1-604-922-8514
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