Passage Analysis Assignment

Passage Analysis Assignment: Modes of Reasoning 1730/1770 (2022/2023)
BASIC INFORMATION: Please Read Carefully!
The purpose of this assignment is to develop and practice your reading comprehension and critical analysis skills on a slightly longer text than the short arguments you’ve worked on so far. This assignment introduces new comprehension and analytic components as well as incorporating ones we’ve covered previously. The assignment is divided into three major sections: the first one focuses on your ability to comprehend the passage; the second with its analysis and the third part are concerned with its evaluation. There is an additional non-marked step of annotating the text for purposes of your own reading comprehension.
• Worth 25% of final mark. (Value of Assignment is 55 marks)
• Due: on Eclass Dropbox (check due date in syllabus for your course/section) Feb. 6th
• Complete all 3 of the Passage Analysis Steps, as taught in class, following the model and format taught in class. Detailed Passage Analysis steps are below in this document.
• Hand in your assignment in by uploading it to the dropbox in E-class. Please use MS Word (no PDF files)
Step 0: (not marked)
READ the passage carefully and annotate the passage in the following ways:
• Draw a line separating each paragraph of the passage.
• Number each paragraph.
• Underline or highlight the main point (topic sentence) of each paragraph. Do not over highlight. Indiicate only the most main points.
• Indicate the main or central concepts by circling, underlining, highlighting.
• Highlight, circle or underline any words that you do not know the meaning of. Look these words up in the dictionary. Write the definition in the margin of the article or insert definition in body of the text.
• Put boxes around logical indicator words.
• Make notes in the margins about your response to the article; for example, your thoughts, emotional reaction, questions, confusions, interesting points, and so on.
Step 1: Comprehension (18 marks)
1. How many paragraphs are in this passage? (1 mark)
2. Write the topic sentence of each paragraph: (3 marks)
3. List any words you did not know the meaning of and look them up. Write a brief definition for each (2 marks); note any points/ideas that you found interesting or controversial (2 marks)
4. List the logical indicator words in the passage (7 marks)
5. Outline the main argument of the text: (3 marks)
Step 2: Analysis (12 marks)
1. Identify the main conclusion of the passage (1 mark)
2. Identify two concepts around which the passage turns (2 marks)
3. Formulate the main conceptual question of the passage (1 mark)
4. Explain what the author means by the two main concepts, that is, provide a detailed understanding of how the author defines these concepts using other concepts (single words or phrases) in the text (4 marks each/total of 8 marks)
Part III: Evaluation (25 marks)
1. Does the argument contain any obvious or serious fallacies? (1 mark)
2. Find one logical fallacy and challenge the fallacy using the full 5-step process taught in class (18 marks)
For Step 1, do not diagram the entire argument. You only need to diagram the premises in which the fallacy appears.
3. Overall Assessment: Looking at the entire passage, how strong do you believe the main argument is? (Is it Strong/Medium/Weak/Very weak?) (1 mark)
4. Why do you believe the argument deserves this rating? Are there ways to strengthen the argument, that is, to constructively criticize it to make it stronger? (5 marks)

Passage: “The Health Care Professions Don’t Care”
I am arguing that in truth health care professions wear the mask of love because underneath they are in fact nothing but large systems, formal structures designed to provide an economy for the people who are inside the system. If, finally you look realistically at the health care professions, they will all use the word “care.” They will talk about things like medicare and providing care for the elderly and care for disabled people and health care, that care is the basic symbol for their ministrations and that the reason they use the word “care” is because care is the manifestation of a feeling, and that feeling is love…the highest value I think that we have. Care and love are never produced by a system. It is in relationships of people and communities that care and love occur. And to steal from the community that most basic of all values and relationships, love and care, is really an ignoble activity. You see, one of the real problems, I believe, about our institutions and systems is that they increasingly have the power to so invade community and community life and the relationship of people to each other, that in fact communities grow weak as systems grow strong. So that children won’t take care of their parents because they know a system “cares” for old people better than they. Then it seems to me that the idea of society is lost.

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