ERIC Number: EJ968508
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2012
Pages: 7
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1740-4622
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Who Wants to Identify a Fallacy?: Using a Game Show Format to Teach Formal and Informal Fallacies
Engstrom, Craig Lee
Communication Teacher, v26 n2 p69-75 2012
This article presents an activity that engages students in a fun and collaborative process of learning, with a primary objective of teaching them how to identify and label formal and informal argumentative fallacies. After playing a variation of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?," students ought to be better prepared to craft stronger arguments and identify problematic appeals in others' everyday discourse. There are at least three reasons to use the activity described in this article. First, popular textbooks used in public speaking and persuasion courses give relatively few pages to fallacies, tend to focus on formal fallacies (i.e. error in deductive reasoning), over informal ones (i.e. irrelevant claim-data connections), and often use hypothetical or historical examples rather than claims made by contemporaries in everyday contexts. Second, spending significant time teaching argumentative fallacies is warranted. Providing students an opportunity to identify fallacies in recent and relevant news articles, online forums, and radio and television programs is one way to point out the troubling ubiquity of fallacies in prosaic rhetoric. Third, game-based activities make seemingly uninteresting topics and routine education activities more exciting, and are effective at stimulating learning. A list of references and suggested readings is included. (Contains 3 figures.)
Descriptors: Public Speaking, Textbooks, Learning Processes, Television, Speech Communication, Listening, Persuasive Discourse, Debate, Teaching Methods, Games
Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 325 Chestnut Street Suite 800, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Fax: 215-625-2940; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: N/A
Audience: Teachers
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A

Peer reviewed
Direct link
