Reference no: EM132818529

Business communication in Australia and Microsoft teams.

Critical Thinking and Forming an Argument

Critical Thinking
Critical thinking requires you, the student to critically analyse the subject or problem (along with possible solutions) at hand, to evaluate and reconstruct it. Through analysing the underlying assumptions, perspectives and information, you will develop clarity and precision which lead to a better understanding of the problem.

All humans have biases and prejudices which affect their thinking, but by applying critical thinking some of the effects can be mitigated. This process involves recognising assumptions, questioning them, gathering and evaluating relevant information, drawing well-formed conclusions and testing them.

At university, critical thinking relates to the way you assess the resources and information you come across: considering multiple perspectives and arguments, challenging existing knowledge and keeping an open mind.

Forming an Argument
An academic argument is a claim or a stance that is justified and supported by evidence. Arguments are used to support a perspective or a position with merit, persuade others to take a particular course of action, convince others that something is true/likely to be true/probable, show a problem with a theory or an approach, or to reason with others to get them to change their mind.
Every argument consists of premises and a conclusion. The premises are particular statements that provide the reasons or evidence supporting the conclusion which is the claim the writer is making. A good argument is one that presents a conclusion and then gives good reasons for accepting it. For an argument to be good, it must conform to the following criteria:
• The premises are acceptable or reasonable.
• The evidence or reasons are relevant to the claim.
• The evidence or reasons provide sufficient grounds to accept the claim.

Even though an argument might be convincing it doesn't mean it is good. Marketing messages, for example, are designed to convince without giving good reasons. On the other hand, if an argument is bad it doesn't necessarily mean that the conclusion is false. A bad argument is one in which the premises do not give good reason to accept the conclusion. Hence, the conclusion may be true, but there doesn't seem to be sufficient evidence.

Forming an argument is a process that starts by choosing and understanding the topic. In the second step, the writer chooses a position; what is the conclusion in the argument? The third step focuses on gathering evidence to support the conclusion; what are the premises? When deciding what evidence to use, both sides of the argument should be considered in order to find flaws. The fourth step involves presenting the argument logically. When the argument has a logical structure the reader understands the relevance of the evidence and is able to follow the reasoning towards the conclusion. Therefore, as the evidence doesn't speak for itself, it's crucial to explain how each piece of evidence supports the conclusion and what makes it credible. Ordinarily, a few strong and well-developed arguments are stronger and more persuasive than many weaker and undeveloped ones.

In the last step, the writer should provide counterarguments in anticipation of objections. The writer should go into more detail about both sides of the topic and claim to compare and contrast the views. Counterarguments should be presented, so that they can be discredited - or even used as evidence of why the writer's claim is the correct one. At the end of the argument, the writer should either restate the original claim or give one final reason as evidence.