In the last installment, we were introduced to the Argument Writing task and found out how it differs from the Issue Task. Then, we briefly looked at the kinds of flaws and fallacies you should expect to find in the given argument. Although there hundreds of possible arguments the ETS may choose, all of them will exhibit at least some of these flaws, so learning them is essential. Here again are those logical flaws:
- Assuming that characteristics of a group apply to each member of that group
- Assuming that a certain condition is necessary for a certain outcome
- Drawing a weak analogy between two things
- Confusing a cause-effect relationship with a correlation (famously known as post hoc ergo propter hoc, i.e. correlation does not imply causation)
- Relying on inappropriate or potentially unrepresentative statistics
- Relying on biased or tainted data (methods for collecting data must be unbiased and the poll responses must be credible)
Most of the arguments contain three or four of these flaws, making your body paragraph organization pretty simple. Becoming familiar with these flaws and how to spot them is the first step to writing a quality Argument Task. Let’s look at these flaws in a little more depth:
1. The Member vs. Group Fallacy: It is pretty unrealistic to describe a group and then expect that every single member fulfills that characteristic. You can remember this fallacy by thinking about stereotypes. We generally think of stereotypes as harmful because they unfairly limit a certain group to one definable characteristic that is often founded on little to no evidence. In order to avoid the member-group fallacy, the argument should clearly state that a member is a representative of the group as a whole; most of the time, however, it won’t.
2. The Necessary Condition Assumption: The speaker of an argument may assume that a certain course of action is necessary or sufficient to achieve a result. The “necessary” line of reasoning is particularly weak if the speaker does not provide evidence that no other means of achieving the same result is possible. For example, a superintendent of a school argues that adopting a certain marketed reading program is necessary–i.e. the only means–to increase reading skills of students.
The “sufficient” line of reasoning is weak if the speaker fails to provide evidence that the proposed course of action would be sufficient to bring about the desired result by itself. In the above example, the superintendent may not have shown that the reading program by itself is enough to raise reading levels. There are other factors involved in this proposed outcome: preparedness of teachers and attentiveness of students.
3. Weak Analogies: The speaker may come to a conclusion about one thing on the basis of another thing. For example, if the manager of a business, say a trading card shop, may find that a big competitor in a different city has increased sales by moving from a downtown location to a suburban one. The argument may seem sound, but we can’t completely analogize these different trading-card shops. First of all, the demographics in their respective cities may respond to different incentives. Maybe that particular city’s downtown district was already on the rise, and the relocation merely reaped the benefits? Without this thorough background info, we can’t make this analogy.
Next time, we’ll look at the next three flaws and discuss how to begin forming our Argument Task essay. To practice, think about these flaws in depth and try to find them in everyday reasoning. Watch out for them in your conversations, in television shows, on commercials, etc. If you can spot them in everyday situations, it will be easy on the test.
See other articles in this series:
Argument Writing Task: Pt 1
