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This section analyzes teachers’ perception of the impact of logical fallacies on students’ debate performance and the debates.
Regarding the effects of logical fallacy commission on students’ mark, two out of three teachers shared the same perspective that logical fallacies play the basic role when it comes to argument and rebuttal assessment. ―When evaluating students’ arguments, I first need to check if any logical fallacies are committed‖, said a teacher. The same teacher added that if students are aware of the logical mistakes and successful at avoiding them or at exploiting the other team’s fallacies to attack them, their chance of getting higher mark from the audience and the teacher will be raised.
Yet, the other teacher disagreed, claiming that though critical thinking of students is required, no micro skill is clearly mentioned. As a result, students’
commission of fallacies has little impact on their marks. In case a fallacy is obviously made, the teacher may raise questions at the end of the debate;
however, being able to response correctly to the questions or not, students will not have their scores deducted.
Despite the previous disagreement, all of the interviewed teachers believed that the commission of logical fallacies may unfavorably influence the effectiveness of the student’s performance in particular and the debates in general. ―In those situations [of making mistakes], students tend to be more nervous and unconfident, and cannot speak fluently. Even if they manage to remain the confident manner, when the mistakes are attacked, they will be likely to beat around the bush and lose confidence‖. Additionally, the debate cannot come to a reasonable end if the students make too many logical fallacies without noticing them. For example, when student A presents argument a, but student B refutes version a’ of argument a instead of argument a itself, making straw man
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fallacy, the debate is clearly not efficient, and even after the debate finishes, the debaters are not able to reach an agreement.
To conclude, although the commission of logical fallacies does not necessarily impact the marks of students, it does have adverse influence on how students perform throughout the debates and how smooth the debates go.
1.3. Students’ knowledge about logical fallacies
General situation
Figure 2 – Students’ knowledge about logical fallacies
Statistics from the figure show that only ten percent of the surveyed students used to be taught about logical fallacies. Those are who attended the General Logic course or the tutoring project in which a group of students in one class trained the other students about one particular topic with the guidance of a supervisor. In both cases, students were provided with only a brief overview of logical fallacies. Meanwhile, 38% of the
10%
52%
38%
Students' knowledge about logical fallacies Students taught about logical fallacies
Students knowing nothing about logical fallacies
Students knowing about logical fallacies without being taught
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surveyed students report that their knowledge was self-cultivated. More than half of the students (52%) admit that they know nothing about the concept of logical fallacies.
Scores according to groups
The following table presents the scores that three above-mentioned groups of students got for the questionnaire.
Mean Mode Median Standard
deviation Students taught
about logical fallacies
3.1 2.5 2.5 1.4
Students knowing nothing about logical fallacies
1.8 2 2 1.3
Students knowing about logical fallacies without being taught
3 2 3 1.4
Table 5 – Students’ questionnaire scores
As described, students of three categories all get very low scores.
This can be explained by the fact that even if students have already been taught about logical mistakes, the course or project did not offer an insight into the concept. Students by themselves also could not gain sufficient knowledge about the idea of logical fallacies.
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To make a comparison among the results of three groups, it can be deduced from the means, modes and medians that students who, to certain extent, have knowledge concerning logical errors through either official lessons or self-study score higher on the questionnaire with no surprise.
What is unexpected is that most of students claiming knowing nothing about logical fallacies still manage to score. Nevertheless, this can be explainable, taking the questions that students get the right answers to into consideration. Students mainly get the scores from replying correctly to questions about formal fallacies and giving sound explanations without naming the types of fallacies in the open-ended question about informal fallacies. In reality, with a critical mind, students are still able to respond properly to those questions in the absence of any knowledge about the concept of logically fallacious mistakes.
The standard deviations suggest that students who know nothing about logical fallacies are more homogeneous in terms of their questionnaire scores. There is more variability in the other two groups.
Accuracy rates according to the questions
The next chart compares the rates of students responding correctly to the MCQs and TFQs, especially to the ones about formal fallacies and those of the ones about informal types.
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Figure 3 – Accuracy rates of responding to MCQs and TFQs in the questionnaire
Apparently, the situation of the students possessing no knowledge about logical fallacies can be applied to the whole group of surveyed students. The accuracy rates of questions 2 (41%) and 3 (59%) about formal fallacies are relatively higher than those of the other questions about informal fallacies (varying from 2% to 33%), proving that they are much less challenging for the majority of students. The explanation is exactly the same as discussed earlier.