Critical Thinking and Rhetoric Short Courses and CPD - Entry

This engaging interactive ten-class series (two hours a session) is designed to nurture would be Critical Thinkers, equipping students with valuable skills and traits in navigating everyday life.

1. Introduction to Critical Thinking.

2. What is an Argument?

3. A Critical View of Advertising.

4. Ambiguity.

5. Fallacies from 'Straw Man' to 'Slippery Slope'.

6. Understanding Rhetoric.

7. Artful Thinking.

8. A to Z of Rhetoric.

9. Synthesis: Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.

10. Critical Thinking for Life & Final Questions.

Key outcomes include detecting potential manipulation in various contexts, recognising assumptions and logical fallacies in arguments, formulating thoughtful and relevant questions, detecting bias, evaluating well, use of multiple relevant perspectives, while also developing deeper discernment and analytical insight with more than a dash of humour. 

The benefits of this interactive course invites students to dive into diverse topics, from dissecting the elements of an argument and identifying advertising tactics to recognising logical missteps, thinking creatively, and understanding the role of rhetoric, culminating in evaluating Marc Antony’s manipulative words in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Students will thereby integrate and refine their Critical Thinking skills.

There is no assessment, but the final Q&A session will invite students to challenge each other’s manner of thinking as well as the tutor’s.

Course dates and times

The time is the same for each of the dates, 2.00PM – 4.00PM.

06/10/2025 – 08/12/2025

Location

257 High Street
Bangor
LL57 1PA

Tutor Bio - Anthony Brooks

On being requested by the English Language Centre for Overseas Students (ELCOS), within ¶º±ÆÖ±²¥, to tutor a new course in Critical Thinking in 2011, he found himself asking an embarrassing question: "What is Critical Thinking?" The answer he received was to research and find it for himself.  With the emergence of key aspects, such as forms of argument, evaluation methods, assessing bias, utilisation of cautious language, engaging with various relevant perspectives and habitually gaining an attitude of questioning - foundations for attempting Critical Thinking (CT) emerged.

 
In addition to encouraging CT in pre-sessional students, he then generated courses to provide deeper insight into delving into its more subtle aspects, such as detecting the differences between preference and bias, assumptions and presumptions, as well as inference and other rhetorical devices and logical fallacies.

CT became essential to the way that everyday thinking got itself done.  Interests in Cinema studies, Tai Chi, Shakespeare, Art history, comedy, Philosophy, advertising methods, Zen meditation or anything else could attempt to be seen through the clarifying lens of CT.

To register for this course please click on the link: