THE INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY (IU) Course: CRITICAL THINKING

INSTRUCTIONS:
1. This is an open book examination. Answer the multiple choice questions and do the
writing section. Use the answer sheets provided.
2. Use of calculator is allowed; discussion and material transfer are strictly prohibited.
Total pages: 09 (including this page)

I. MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS (80 points)

1. “Let’s see what we should do with our 9-day Tet holiday. How about a trip to Thailand? Not many
people enjoy the traditional Tet at home cooking, partying or visiting relatives and friends any more. We
should enjoy Tet being freed from such boring things.”

Which fallacy does the speaker commit?

(a) Two wrongs make a right
(b) No fallacy
(c) Bandwagon (4 points)
(d) Straw man

2. Linda: “My favorite singer has just got a big hit. It’s great!”
Ann: “Hey, how can you feel happy when your idol was violently attacked like that?”

Which fallacy does Ann make?”

(a) Begging the question
(b) Red herring
(c) Weak analogy
(d) Equivocation (4 points)

3. “With their waves of rumors, social networks have negatively affected the lives of some famous
people. Therefore, social networks must be closed.”

Which fallacy does this argument contain?

(a) Red herring
(b) Bandwagon
(c) Hasty generalization
(d) Questionable cause (4 points)

4. “Tim comes to class late on a regular basis. He lacks discipline.” Which of the following should be
added to make a deductively sound argument?

(a) Nothing is missing: There are sufficient premises and a conclusion.

(b) Major premise: Students who are frequently late for class do not have discipline. (4 points)
(c) Minor premise: Tim frequently gets up around 7 a.m.
(d) Conclusion: So he must be punished.

5. “Jobs are harder to find in today’s economic crisis. You should put your university degrees away and
get a job as a worker to make a living. All jobs are jobs after all.” Which of the following statements is
the most effective one to refute the argument?

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(a) But we can’t be held for the economic crisis. What have the authorities done for us?
(b) It’s very easy get a good job as a worker, and workers also contribute to the economy.
(c) There are many reasons for the job reduction, so university graduates should lower their
expectations.
(d) Are workers paid and treated as well as working people with university degrees? (4 points)

6. “Forty out of eighty-four students in my class have chosen to take up a soft skill class of some kind.
Clearly, soft skills courses are of great attraction to them.” This argument is ______.

(a) deductively sound

(b) inductively cogent
(c) inductively weak (4 points)
(d) deductively invalid

7. Doctor: “You should not eat too many eggs because they are not good for health problems.”
Bob: “But I don’t think I should stop. I read Wikipedia and it says that I can eat eggs OK!”

Which fallacy may Bob commit?

(a) Questionable cause
(b) No fallacy
(c) Hasty generalization
(d) Inappropriate appeal to authority (4 points)

8. Witness: “The robbers knocked the man down, hit him too hard in the face and got away with his
motorbike.”
Police: “No one came to help him? Were you standing there watching only?”
Witness: “I was. But the man was alright after all. He even offered to ride me home. So you can see
it was not that bad when I didn’t do anything, right?”

Which fallacy may the witness commit?

(a) Inconsistency (2 points)
(b) Bandwagon
(c) False alternatives
(d) Slippery slope

9. “Because keeping promises shapes reliability so Hank is not a reliable person”

Which of the following is the standardized form of the above argument?

(a) Keeping promises shapes reliability. Hank does not keep his promises. So Hank is not a
reliable person. (2 points)
(b) All reliable people sometimes do not keep their promises. Hank does not keep his promises. So
Hank is not a reliable person.
(c) Because Hank is a reliable person, he always keeps his promises.
(d) All people like reliable people because they keep their promises. Very often Hank does not keep
his promises. So Hank is not a reliable person.

10. Mary: “He is just twenty years old. You can’t let him make a decision for the whole company.”

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Tim: “But you are twenty years old too. And you want me to let you decide on what to wear and
where to go at weekends!”

Which fallacy may Tim commit?

(a) Two wrongs make a right
(b) Look who’s talking
(c) False alternatives
(d) Weak analogy (2 points)

11. Thousands of tobacco farm workers will lose their jobs if cigarette taxes are doubled. Therefore,
cigarette taxes should not be doubled. This is a/an______fallacy.
(a) straw man
(b) scare-tactics
(c) appeal-to-pity (2 points)
(d) two-wrongs-make-a-right

12. “There is a flood of Mexican immigrants into the United States. Soon Spanish will become the
official language of California and Texas. Eventually, the entire United States will be just a Spanish
culture”. Identify the fallacy committed by the above argument.

(a) Questionable cause

(b) Slippery slope (2 points)
(c) Hasty generalization
(d) False alternative

13. No one can prove that God does not exist, so there is God.

(a) Questionable cause

(b) Weak analogy
(c) Slippery slope
(d) Appeal to ignorance (2 points)
14. In an argument standardization, we should include ______.

(a) questions
(b) missing premises or conclusions (2 points)
(c) irrelevant statements
(d) relevant reasons

15. “Good students always go to class on time. I go to class on time every day.” What is missing in this
argument?

(a) An explanation
(b) A proof
(c) A premise
(d) A conclusion (2 points)

16. Which of the following is true?

(a) A good argument is a persuasive argument.

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(b) A good argument must be well-written.

(c) A good argument cannot conflict with background beliefs.
(d) A good argument may not agree with your own experience. (2 points)

17. Which argument is strongest?

(a) If you can learn to hit a baseball, you can learn to speak a foreign language fluently. They both
take practice.
(b) Life is just like chess. It’s a complicated game, but you can win if you learn the rules and cheat a
little.
(c) You like lobster and other seafood, and king crab legs taste like lobster. So, you would
probably like king crab legs. (2 points)
(d) Taking care of your body is like taking care of your car. Preventive maintenance and a yearly
inspection are required.

18. Which evidence is the worst?

(a) All ten of the people who ate the fish at the buffet were sick the next day.
(b) Most National Hockey League Players are Caucasians. (2 points)
(c) Ninety-three out of one hundred people who cut down their calorie intake and exercised more
lost weight.
(d) All twelve of the students who went on the camping trip came back with a cold.

19. “The probability of a hurricane hitting the Northeast in October” is an example of ______.

(a) A priori probability

(b) Epistemic probability
(c) Relative frequency (2 points)
(d) None of the above
20. Uniforms are required in many public service occupations. Police Officers and Firefighters, for
example, are required to wear uniforms on the job. Elementary school teachers hold public service
positions. Isn't it reasonable to require them to wear uniforms too?

(a) Slippery Slope

(b) Hasty Generalization
(c) False Alternatives
(d) Weak Analogy (2 points)

21. No one has shown conclusively that Mr. Bonds has taken performance-enhancing steroids. We must
conclude, then, that he has not.

(a) Questionable Cause

(b) Hasty Generalization
(c) Loaded Question
(d) Appeal to Ignorance (2 points)

22. Some arguments can be refuted by showing that one or more premises are:

(a) false

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(b) dubious
(c) both of a and b (2 points)
(d) none of a and b

23. “Professor Jacob can be a good researcher but a bad teacher. He never explains the lessons in details.
He doesn’t prepare the lessons carefully and never gives students a chance to discuss the lessons in
class. His armpits smell bad as well.”

Which of the followings should be done to make the above argument stronger?
(a) Add a conclusion
(b) Add indicators
(c) Remove the last statement (2 points)
(d) All of the above

24. We may have good reason to doubt the credibility of a source if______.

(a) the source is not a genuine expert or authority on the topic he or she is discussing
(b) the issue is not one that can be settled by expert opinion
(c) he/ she has a reason to lie
(d) All of the above (2 points)

25. Which of the following sentences is NOT a loaded question?

(a) Just when did you realize that you were speeding?
(b) Since racial hatred is caused by diversity isn't it a good idea to restrict immigration?
(c) How many days a person can survive without water? (2 points)
(d) Are you still drinking excessively?

26. “Animals that are loved by someone should not be killed for food, and dogs are certainly loved by
someone.”Which part of the argument is missing?

(a) The premise: “Dogs are animals”.

(b) The conclusion: “Dogs should not be killed for food”. (2 points)
(c) The conclusion: “Dogs are animals”.
(d) No part is missing.

27. “Only nonprofit organizations are exempt from paying taxes, so the Red Cross must be
exempt.”Which part of the argument is missing?

(a) The premise: “The Red Cross is a nonprofit organization.” (2 points)

(b) The conclusion: “The Red Cross is a nonprofit organization.”
(c) The conclusion: “The Red Cross must be exempt from paying taxes.”
(d) No part is missing.

28. My teacher, a Singaporean, said that it’s more expensive to live in Singapore than it is to live in
other Asian countries. But Singapore is a great place to live. It has many parks, great restaurants,
excellent services. I do not agree with him.

The above argument commits ______.

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(a) fallacy of look who's talking

(b) fallacy of straw man
(c) fallacy of red herring (2 points)
(d) no fallacy

29. Father to son: “Either you go to university or people will look down on you. You don’t want people
to look down on you, do you?

The above argument commits ______.

(a) Fallacy of weak analogy

(b) Fallacy of false alternatives (2 points)
(c) Fallacy of questionable cause
(d) Fallacy of slippery slope

30. Teacher to student: “If you skip class today, you will tend to skip class next week, and so on next
next week. As a result, you will miss a lot of lessons and fail the course. You waste your parents’
money. It shows that you don’t love them. Thus, do not skip class today if you love your parent”.

(a) Fallacy of scare tactics

(b) Fallacy of false alternatives
(c) Fallacy of questionable cause
(d) Fallacy of slippery slope (2 points)

31. Which of the following is not a type of inductive argument:

(a) argument from analogy
(b) statistical argument
(c) mathematical argument (2 points)
(d) causal argument

32. Which of the below statements is true?

(a) A fallacy is an argument that contains at least one false premise.

(b) Fallacies of relevance are fallacies that occur because the premises, though logically relevant to
the conclusion, fail to provide sufficient evidence for the conclusion.
(c) A statement is positively relevant to another statement if it counts in favor of that
statement. (2 points)
(d) A statement is negatively relevant to another statement if it counts neither for nor against that
statement.

33. Decide which of the individual piece/s of information would strengthen the argument if added (write
out the options that you chose: A, B, or C, etc).
“I strongly believe the next few decades will see great changes in the way energy is supplied and used. 
In some major oil producing countries, 'peak oil' has already been reached, and there are increasing
fears of global warming.  Consequently, many countries are focusing on the switch to a low carbon
economy. Firstly, there will be an increase in overall demand for electricity, as consumers switch from
oil and gas to electricity to power their homes and vehicles.  Secondly, there will be an increase in
power generation, not only in terms of how much is generated, but also how it is generated, as there is

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growing electricity generation from renewable sources. There is also likely more electricity generation
centres, as households and communities take up the opportunity to install solar panels and small scale
wind turbines.  This system aims to provide the electricity industry with a better understanding of power
generation and demand, and to use this information to create a more efficient power network”.

A. To meet these objectives, countries are investing in Smart Grid technology. (1 points)
B. Global warming is a serious problem because it will cause more ice to melt.
C. Those scientists have been developing Smart Grid technology, because it is essential to today’s
life.
D. In such a country, the energy crisis is a very serious issue.
E. This transition will lead to major changes in the supply and use of electricity. (1 points)

II. WRITING (Students can select Part A or Part B)

Choose Part A or B:

PART A: (20 points)

1. Number the argument and diagram it (10 points)

Rote learning is a bad teaching method because it is merely the act of memorization, not actual
understanding, it reflects the passive style of learning it doesn’t help students improve their creativeness
and independent thinking. Also, its name doesn’t sound interesting. No bad teaching methods should be
used to teach students. Therefore, rote learning method shouldn’t be used to teach students.

Answer
(1) Rote learning is a bad teaching method because (2) it is merely the act of
memorization, not actual understanding, (3) it reflects the passive style of
learning,(4) it doesn’t help students improve their creativeness and independent
thinking. Also, (5) its name doesn’t sound interesting. (6) No bad teaching
methods should be used to teach students. Therefore, (7) rote learning method
shouldn’t be used to teach students.

2. Give your evidences to strengthen the argument or try to refute it (10 points): “College is not
the right way for us, nowadays. Take a job in show business and be rich.”

PART B: (20 points)

Write a 200-300 word short essay to comment on a policy being in effect at International University
(e.g. online course registration, English only on campus, the use of canteen cards, freedom of dress code,
…).

THE END.

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