A toothpaste ad on a building, showing a man tearing up part of the billboard with his teeth and the byline "Builds strong teeth". Below, we ask what type of argument is being made: factual, causal, definitional, or resemblance.

It's a big one this week!

Building on last week's lesson on cause & effect vs criteria & match reasoning, we've published Seven Types of Argument.

This lesson introduces students to the way we use reasoning to tackle a range of questions about the world.

A screenshot of the factual arguments page, with an example from a YouTube channel called Corridor Crew that uses VFX expertise to analyse UFO and paranormal footage.

The seven types of arguments we introduce are:

  • Factual
  • Causal
  • Definitional
  • Resemblance
  • Valuational
  • Proposal
  • Ethical

The point of the lesson isn't to master each argument type so much as to learn to recognise their distinctive qualities and get a sense of how they can interact, because once you've learned about them, you'll see them everywhere!

As with the reasoning lesson, this lesson is more about thinking than writing:

A frog in a chef's outfit sits behind a large plate with a small pudding on top. The pudding is decorated with a grasshopper topper. Underneath, we ask students to write questions that could be answered by each of the 7 types of argument.

This lesson will be followed by Argument Components, which will unpack building blocks that can be used to construct any type of argument.

You can explore the Argument Types lesson here.

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