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Higher Education

Becoming an Active Reader: Chapter 4

Instructions: For each question, click on the radio button beside your answer. When you have completed the entire quiz, click the “Submit my answers” button at the bottom of the page to receive your results.

Question 1:


a) a complicated or obscure writing style
b) the strategies used to persuade an audience
c) an opinion without any basis in fact
d) the evidence used to support a claim

Question 2:


a) reason, ethics, and emotion
b) judgment, analysis, and emotion
c) reason, ethics, and analysis
d) ethics, emotion, and analysis

Question 3:


a) the audience and its perspective
b) finding the weakness in the opponent’s argument
c) adopting the arguer’s position
d) All of the above.

Question 4:


a) the word Toulmin uses for “claim”
b) the word Toulmin uses for “support”
c) a fact that will intrigue the reader about the arguer’s position
d) a link between the claim and the evidence

Question 5:


a) physical laws
b) human laws
c) assumptions and premises
d) All of the above.

Question 6:


a) To try to change a situation
b) To explain a scientific fact
c) To try to find a compromise between two points of view
d) To raise awareness about an issue

Question 7:


a) unchanging
b) uncertain
c) illogical
d) challengeable

Question 8:


a) try to persuade their audience that their opinions are facts
b) distinguish fact from opinion
c) stress opinion over facts
d) do not need to be concerned with facts

Question 9:


a) something is good or bad, or fair or unfair
b) an action should be taken to fix a problem
c) something is more or less valuable than something else
d) None of the above.

Question 10:


a) be expressed in one sentence and have objective evidence for support
b) have an opposing side that is fundamentally weak or flawed
c) have an opposing side and have objective evidence for support
d) have been argued successfully many times before

Question 11:


a) are easier to support than vague, non-specific ones
b) tend to be hard to support as concrete evidence may be lacking
c) are preferable to realistic claims
d) are not applicable to argument

Question 12:


a) is often used to set up a claim in the introduction
b) is derived from what someone has heard or experienced
c) should not be used in argument as it is simply someone’s opinion
d) is an example of “hard evidence,” which has the greatest authority in an argument

Question 13:


a) a special kind of claim
b) a prediction about an outcome
c) a past example that is relevant to your argument
d) both A and B

Question 14:


a) ensure that it takes the form of an emotional appeal
b) ensure that the experience is a recent one
c) refer to it often throughout your argument
d) stress what you have learned from it and make it relevant

Question 15:


a) should be avoided in most arguments
b) works from the general to the specific
c) works from the specific to the general
d) can work from the general to the specific or the specific to the general depending on context

Question 16:


a) not enough observations have been made
b) the method used to gather data is flawed
c) both A and B
d) neither A nor B

Question 17:


a) the general statement must be true if the conclusion is to be valid
b) the general statement must be logically related to the specific case
c) both A and B
d) neither A nor B

Question 18:


a) misuse of reason
b) misuse of emotion
c) misuse of circular argument
d) an argumentative strategy

Question 19:


a) one side of an argument is clearly superior to the other side
b) if a practice is adopted, increasingly negative consequences will result
c) there are only two choices, one of which is much worse than the other
d) because one event followed another, the first event must have caused the second

Question 20:


a) inductive reasoning
b) a logical fallacy
c) a hasty generalization
d) slanted language

Question 21:


a) Making a concession
b) Using a red herring
c) Appealing to reader interests
d) Establishing common ground

Question 22:


a) is an emotional fallacy
b) attempts to call forth a reader’s feelings
c) should be placed in the introduction
d) None of the above.

Question 23:


a) should be placed in the conclusion
b) tends to weaken an argument by referring to the other side
c) shows the limitations of the other side of the argument
d) both A and B

Question 24:


a) you are not fully committed to your argument
b) you are unclear about arguments on the opposing side
c) your audience is largely unaware of opposing arguments
d) All of the above.

Question 25:


a) from the weakest to the strongest point
b) from the strongest to the weakest point
c) from the most general to the most specific point
d) from the most specific to the most general point