Assessing an Author’s Claims

In recent years you have probably heard or read about many different social issues, such as the environment, health care, unemployment and immigration. Each of these issues presents challenges for political and civic leaders because there are many points of view and proposals to address each issue. The issue of immigration, for example, may seem to be a modern problem, but in reality it has a long history dating back as far as 1790 with the first naturalization law.  It is a very complex issue, and often difficult to understand, like many social issues facing our society.

In order to be a well-informed citizen, you need to be able to evaluate the claims presented by different points of view. In this module, you will analyze and evaluate an author’s use of reasoning and evidence to support his or her claims.

Module Objectives

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

• Analyze and evaluate an author’s use of reasoning and evidence to support his or her claims.
• Analyze and evaluate connections among evidence, inferences and claims in an argument.
• Identify and explain common logical fallacies (e.g., the appeal to pity, the personal attack, the appeal to common opinion, the false dilemma).
• Evaluate the credibility of an author’s argument by analyzing the manipulation of language, as well as the range, sufficiency, quality, relevance and validity of the claims.
• Evaluate the author’s acknowledgement of opposing points of views and the reasoning and evidence the author uses to refute these views.