Purpose Statement
The “Find the Fallacy”
activity is meant to encourage students to question their assumptions. Many
times our busy way of life, and possibly our dependence on the media to do our
thinking for us, builds lazy thinking habits. This activity helps students
question and discuss the problems with relying on assumption and opinions.
Students are encouraged to “find the facts.”
Description of Activity
a) The instructor will
have to type up the ten statements that are printed in bold on the exercise.
This should take only a few minutes and can be done on a half sheet and copied
and pasted in order to save paper.
b) Break the students into small groups of three. Tell the students to discuss
each statement together and develop an explanation of what is wrong with each.
The instructor can either preface the activity with a description of each
fallacy, or give the students a handout describing the fallacies, or explain the
fallacies after students analyze the statements.
c) It is important for the instructor to have students engage in active
discussion regarding not only what is wrong with the statements, but what types
of assumptions they are making in life. This should make for a lively
discussion.
d) As a follow up activity, the instructor can have students write a short
paper investigating one of the fallacies with research on the history of the
fallacy and how it is used today drawing from real-life examples. This would be
a good extra-credit assignment.
Materials Needed
A Handout of the
activity will appear soon.
Application
The Find the Fallacy
activity would be a good exercise to be given prior to the beginning of a term
paper or research project. It’s one thing to tell students not to rely on
assumption and opinion when preparing a project, and it is another thing to
require them to participate in an exercise of this type where they have to
explain their rationale.
The small group discussions can be completed in 15-20 minutes and class
discussion could take another 20 minutes. This activity, then, could be
completed in one 50-minute class session.
Related Student Services
There are good
critical thinking activities posted on this web site. Gerry Lewin in the DSPS
office also has many good critical thinking skills activities.
this web page was created
on 11/2/99 at 5:13:44 PM
and modified on 11/2/99 at 5:13:44 PM