Môn Tư duy phản biện

1. Cấu trúc đề thi: 90 phút

Phần 1: Trắc nghiệm 4 phương án lựa chọn (các kì trc là 5 phương án nhưng vì sv
kém quá nên từ kì này cắt đi còn 4 phương án)
30 câu – 6 điểm
1. Assumption Questions
2. Strengthening Questions
3. Weakening Questions
4. Inference Questions
5. Evaluate the Argument Questions
6. Resolve-Explain/ Paradox Questions
7. Mimic-the-Reasoning/ Parallel the Reasoning Questions

Phần 2: Tự luận: Writing an argumentative essay

01 bài -4 điểm
Cần học thuộc các loại lỗi

2. Sample 02 phần của đề thi (Nên tự làm rồi check đáp án ở cuối file)

PART ONE: CRITICAL REASONING

1. The chanterelle, a type of wild mushroom, grows beneath host trees such as the Douglas fir,
which provide it with necessary sugars. The underground filaments of chanterelles, which
extract the sugars, in
turn provide nutrients and water for their hosts. Because of this mutually beneficial
relationship, harvesting the chanterelles growing beneath a Douglas fir seriously endangers
the tree.
Which of the following, if true, casts the most doubt on the conclusion drawn above?
(A) The number of wild mushrooms harvested has increased in recent years.
(B) Chanterelles grow not only beneath Douglas firs but also beneath other host trees.
(C) Many types of wild mushrooms are found only in forests and cannot easily be grown
elsewhere.
(D) The harvesting of wild mushrooms stimulates future growth of those mushrooms.
2. The reason much refrigerated food spoils is that it ends up out of sight at the back of the
shelf. So why not have round shelves that rotate? Because such rotating shelves would have
just the same sort of drawback, since things would fall off the shelves' edges into the rear
corners.
Which of the following is presupposed in the argument against introducing rotating
shelves?
(A) Refrigerators would not be made so that their interior space is cylindrical.
(B) Refrigerators would not be made to have a window in front for easy viewing of their
contents without opening the door.
(C) The problem of spoilage of refrigerated food cannot be solved by any solution based on
design changes.
(D) Refrigerators are so well designed that there are bound to be drawbacks to any design
change.

3. It would cost Rosetown one million dollars to repair all of its roads. In the year after
completion of those repairs, however, Rosetown would thereby avoid incurring three million
dollars’ worth of damages, since currently Rosetown pays that amount annually in
compensation for damage done to cars each year by its unrepaired roads.

Which of the following, if true, gives the strongest support to the argument above?
(A) Communities bordering on Rosetown also pay compensation for damage done to cars by
their unrepaired roads.
(B) After any Rosetown road has been repaired several years will elapse before that road
begins to damage cars.
(C) Rosetown would need to raise additional taxes if it were to spend one million dollars in
one year on road repairs.
(D) The degree of damage caused to Rosetown’s roads by harsh weather can vary widely
from year to year.

4. Two experimental garden plots were each planted with the same number of tomato plants.
Magnesium salts were added to the first plot but not to the second. The first plot produced 20
pounds of tomatoes and the second plot produced 10 pounds. Since nothing else but water
was added to either plot, the higher yields in the first plot must been due to the magnesium
salts.
Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument above?
(A) A small amount of the magnesium salts from the first plot leached into the second plot.
(B) Tomato plants in a third experimental plot, to which a high-nitrogen fertilizer was added,
but no magnesium salts, produced 15 pounds of tomatoes.
(C) Four different types of tomatoes were grown in equal proportions in each of the plots.
(D) The two experimental plots differed from each other with respect to soil texture and
exposure to sunlight.

5. In several cities, the government is going ahead with ambitious construction projects
despite the high office-vacancy rates in those cities. The vacant offices, though available for
leasing, unfortunately do not meet the requirements for the facilities needed, such as
laboratories. The government, therefore, is not guilty of any financial wastefulness.
Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument above depends?
(A) Adaptation of vacant office space to meet the government’s requirements, if possible,
would not make leasing such office space a more cost-effective alternative to new
construction.
(B) The government prefers leasing facilities to owning them in cases where the two
alternatives are equally cost-effective.
(C) If facilities available for leasing come very close to meeting the government’s
requirements for facilities the government needs, the government can relax its own
requirements slightly and consider those facilities in compliance.
(D) The government’s construction projects would not, on being completed, add to the stock
of facilities available for leasing in the cities concerned.

6. Demographers doing research for an international economics newsletter claim that the
average per capita income in the country of Kuptala is substantially lower than that in the
country of Bahlton. They also claim, however, that whereas poverty is relatively rare in
Kuptala, over half the population of Bahlton lives in extreme poverty. At least one of the
demographers' claims must, therefore, be wrong.
The argument above is most vulnerable to which of the following criticisms?
(A) It rejects a claim about the average per capita incomes in the two countries without
making any attempt to discredit that claim by offering additional economic evidence.
(B) It treats the vague term "poverty" as though it had a precise and universally accepted
meaning.
CD) It fails to show that wealth and poverty have the same social significance in Kuptala as in
Bahlton.
(D) It does not consider the possibility that incomes in Kuptala, unlike those in Bahlton,
might all be very close to the country's average per capita income.

7. Normally, increases in the price of a product decrease its sales except when the price
increase accompanies an improvement in the product. Wine is unusual, however. Often
increases in the price of a particular producer's wine will result in increased sales, even when
the wine itself is unchanged.
Which of the following, if true, does most to explain the unusual thing described above?
(A) The retail wine market is characterized by an extremely wide range of competing
products.
(B) Many consumers make decisions about which wines to purchase on the basis of reviews
of wine published in books and periodicals.
(C) Consumers selecting wine in a store often use the price charged as their main guide to the
wine's quality.
(D) Wine retailers and producers can generally increase the sales of a particular wine
temporarily by introducing a price discount.

8. The recent decline in land prices has hurt many institutions that had invested heavily in real
estate. Last year, before the decline began, a local college added 2,000 acres to its
investments. The college, however, did not purchase the land but received it as a gift.
Therefore, the price decline will probably not affect the college.
Which of the following, if true, casts most doubt on the conclusion above?
(A) The 2,000 acres that the college was given last year are located within the same
community as the college itself.
(B) The college usually receives more contributions of money than of real estate.
(C) Land prices in the region in which the college is located are currently higher than the
national average.
(D) Last year, the amount that the college allocated to pay for renovations included money it
expected to receive by selling some of its land this year.

9. Civil trials often involve great complexities that are beyond the capacities of jurors to
understand. As a result, jurors' decisions in such trials are frequently incorrect. Justice would
therefore be better served if the more complex trials were decided by judges rather than juries.
The argument above depends on which of the following assumptions?
(A) A majority of civil trials involve complexities that jurors are not capable of
understanding.
(B) The judges who would decide complex civil trials would be better able to understand the
complexities of those trials than jurors are.
(C) The judges who would preside over civil trials would disallow the most complex sorts of
evidence from being introduced into those trials.
(D) Jurors' decisions are frequently incorrect even in those civil trials that do not involve great
complexities.

10. Some species of dolphins find their prey by echolocation; they emit clicking sounds and
listen for echoes returning from distant objects in the water. Marine biologists have speculated
that those same clicking sounds might have a second function: particularly loud clicks might
be used by the dolphins to cause shocks to their prey at close range through sensory overload.
Which of the following, if discovered to be true, would cast the most serious doubt on the
correctness of the speculation described above?
(A) Dolphins that use echolocation to locate distant prey also emit frequent clicks at
intermediate distances as they close in on their prey.
(B) The usefulness of echolocation as a means of locating prey depends on the clicking
sounds being of a type that the prey is incapable of perceiving, regardless of volume.
(C) If dolphins stun their prey, the effect is bound to be so temporary that stunning from far
away, even if possible, would be ineffective.
(D) Echolocation appears to give dolphins that use it information about the richness of a
source of food as well as about its direction.

PART 2: ANALYSIS OF AN ARGUMENT

The following appeared in a memorandum from the director of research and

development at Ready-to-Ware, a software engineering firm.

The package of benefits and incentives that Ready-to-Ware offers to professional

staff is too costly. Our quarterly profits have declined since the package was
introduced two years ago, at the time of our incorporation. Moreover, the
package had little positive effect, as we have had only marginal success in
recruiting and training high-quality professional staff. To become more
profitable again, Ready-to-Ware should, therefore, offer the reduced benefits
package that was in place two years ago and use the savings to fund our current
research and development initiatives.
Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to
analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example,
you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and
what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You
can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what
changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything,
would help you better evaluate its conclusion.

Đáp án

CR

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
__D__ __A__ __B__ __D__ __A__ __D__ __C__ __D__ __B__ __B_

Bài viết tham khảo: Band 3/4đ

The argument claims that the package of benefits and incentives that, Ready To Ware,
the software engineering firm, offers to its professional staff, is too expensive. The
writer affirm that the quarterly profits of the company have been reduced since the
introductions of the package two years ago. Further, the package seemed to have a
limited positive effect since the company has not been able to recruit and train a large
number of high-quality professional staff. The writer goes on by asserting that because
of the negative impact of the package, the company should offer it and use the savings
to fund its current research and development studies. However, the conclusion of the
argument relies on assumptions for which there is no clear evidence. Hence, the
argument is unconvincing and has several flaws.

First, the argument relies on one big assumption, that is the correlation between the
reduced quarterly profits to the negative impact of the packages offered. This
statement is a stretch because it doesn’t rely on any specific historical data or analysis.
The company, in order to do such a statement, should have studied the causes that lay
behind the reduced profits. The company could have found that the reduction could
have been related to lower revenues in the period to which the profits are referred.
Second, another assumption is that the little positive effect of the company’s package
can be explained by the marginal success in recruiting and training professional staff.
Clearly, the writer does not consider other factors into the lessen of recruitment. To
illustrate this, we shall observe that the company itself could have been the main cause
of the less attractiveness to high-quality staff. For example, Ready-to-Ware, in the two
years period, could have received a great amount of bad reviews which could have
given the company a bad image in its target market.

Furthermore, the argument claims that the company should sell its package and use the
savings to invest in its research department. However, this could easily turn out to be a
bad move for the company. Its workers could be less motivated to work once this
benefit will not be given. On the other hand, investing in the research area, which is an
area that is strongly subject to uncertainty, may be too risky and could lead to an
increase of the costs. In order to make this assumption, the company should predict the
impact that this investment could grant.

In conclusion, the argument is flawed for the above-mentioned reasons. In order to

assess the merits of a certain situation, it is essential to have full knowledge of all
contributing factors. In this particular case, it is necessary to have data which could
explain the impact on the company of the package. Without this fundamental
information, the argument remains unsubstantiated and open to debate.