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Among other things, critical thinking involves being able to:
- distinguish fact from biased opinion
- to recognize when arguments need further support
- and to identify when ideas need further exploration to be seen as valid.
The critical thinking focus in unit 3 of Skillful is on bias.
The relevant Lexico definition of bias is: "Inclination or prejudice for or against one person or group, especially in a way considered to be unfair."
Questions
- In which situation(s) might someone present a biased argument?
- Why is it important to keep bias out of academic writing?
- How can you combat biased arguments in your work? What specific strategies can help you to avoid bias?
Although you might disagree, I thought that these were ranked in order from least to most important, so that the second and third probably deserve more words than the first question.
You have 16:00 minutes to plan and write a response to all three questions. I suggest you divide your time roughly as:
- planning = 3:00 minutes (Cover all three topics. Get ideas. Organize your ideas.)
- writing = 10:00 minutes, and
- editing = 3:00 minutes.
A useful strategy - as usual
Imagine you are writing for someone who has not read the question you have chosen to answer or the article that the question follows up. Your aim is to clearly communicate your response to that reader, so it might help to paraphrase the chosen question at the start of your response to it.
This is also a useful strategy in exams such as IELTS and TOEFL, where it's important that your independent writing response makes sense independently of the question to which it must respond.
Reference
- Warwick, L. & Rogers, L. (2018). Skillful 4: Reading & Writing, Student's Book Pack (2nd. ed.). London: Macmillan Education
I think it's natural to argue with bias when we strongly believe that our position it the right one. Of course, people can also present biased arguments for other reasons, as Emma and Earth's example of pharmaceutical company lobbyists showed, but I think we are most likely to fall into bias when we care passionately about something, for example, in the US, people on both sides of the very controversial abortion issue both seem to me to be strongly biases, either ignoring or denying opposing arguments and facts.
ReplyDeleteAnd at least one serious danger comes from bias. If your argument is founded on only looking at one side of the issue, for example in the abortion debate I mentioned above, you will be in serious trouble when the other side brings up strong arguments against your preferred position. It makes our own ideas stronger if we honestly admit the opposing side's arguments and facts, and then deal with them.
And that suggests, as Earth's question before did, that one way we can avoid bias in our own work is to always make an effort to study the arguments and evidence of people who think we are wrong. Of course, there is a risk to this: if we are truly open to alternative points of view, it might turn out that we discover we were wrong. In that case, we should change our minds, so I guess that another strategy for avoiding bias is to be open to the possibility that we are wrong and should revise our initial ideas about something.
Had I spent a bit more time proofreading, I would have fixed the two typing mistakes in my language - but don't worry, in a TOEFL or IELTS test, you would not lose any points for those sorts of minor mistakes.
DeleteIn the situation that someone thinks or believes differently than the speakers or the proponents and also has some strong reason to support his/her opinion, they want to share their opinion to the others to make people see the other view.
ReplyDeleteThe reason that we should keep bias out of academic writing is academic writing has been analysed and considered from different information which are reliable.
To combat biased arguments in my work, I should open my mind and listen to the opinions of others especially to people who have bias in my work. Then clarify my work again and show them support reasons from reliable sources. To avoid bias, I should find and prepare references from reliable sources as much as I can to give clear information to the others to make them figure out what I mean and show them that I prepared my work from a balanced view.
I think people might present a biased argument when they sell their products or services. I usually experience the situation at work or at sell pitch. At work, if my colleagues and I want to be recognized our ideas as part of acceptance and to get promotions. I think it involves what we call 'office politics'. To be honest, sometimes even though, my colleagues' ideas are better than me, I need to present my bias arguments to weaken that as I want them to follow what I want them to do.
ReplyDeleteThe situation someone might present a biased argument is the commercial topic to support their products or services. For example, if you are a seller selling an electric pan, you will try to persuade your consumers by giving only one side of its benefits and avoid to say about the negative about it resulting in gaining more profits. However, in academic areas, it is important to avoid bias for writing academic work. The most vital reason is neutral writing can give more discussions and can judge from the presented data fairly. The fair discussion will show the correct conclusions that are useful in real life and improve the scientific theories to generate innovation in the future. In addition, the way to avoid biased arguments are think in both sides in neutral ways and not using adjective or adverb that express your feeling in your works.
ReplyDeleteI think that a bias argument is always on commercial topic as you said they want to sell their product, so there is no reason to tell people the negative thing. And in your last sentence I just notice that the words shown bias are usually adjective and adverb. I have to be more careful to write works.
DeleteIn every article it is aimed at the reader to understand something. Therefore, in academic writing, which is producing credible articles for reference purposes, The authors should avoid writing that mixes personal opinions with facts. And if a topics will be mention of things that are beneficial or harmful to the public, The authors need to reflect on the subject in a comprehensive manner.
ReplyDeleteFor me I think the situation that people might present their bias is when they do something by themselves and they want to show it to people. For example, when you did experimental you trend to have a bias with it or you trend to believe in it even the others have the different result from you. And the other common situation is when people have a different opinion from the writing or from the speakers.
ReplyDeleteIt’s important to keep bias out of academic writing because the academic writing is about something that most people believe in or they trust it. If the writer have a bias in the writing, the objective of the writing will be missed.
To combat biased argument, I think we have to think in the opposite way from thing we believed or thing in the other sides and thing about the pros and cons in both sides. Using language is also important especially when you compare the things, the words like better, worse, the best are showing your bias. The last thing is you have to writing only the fact, not your opinion.
I want to follow up Gubgib's concluding comment, but later. I don't have time now. But before I post my reply, I'm very interested in what others think about Gubgib's suggestion that we not write our own opinion.
DeleteI think your comment is similar to mine. I agree that to combat biased arguments, we have to think on both sides and write only the facts, not our opinion because if we do not give balanced information to people, they will not accept the things we want to present and might resist our work. From this point of view, bias is good to make presenters improve their work and consider their work carefully before publishing. I think biased arguments might be very important or be a part of the processes of academic writing before publishing.
Delete