-- 06-- Assumptions, Main Ideas

-- 06-- Assumptions, Main Ideas

TFY -- Chapter Five Assumptions

This chapter concerns another familiar word, assumptions, demonstrating some surprising complexities in the term. Multiple exercises will show you how assumptions relate to facts and inferences, how they affect thinking, how they affect arguments, and how they might be unraveled and clarified. A writing application involves an expository essay on assumption recognition and its role in creative problem solving. A reading selection by Edward de Bono demonstrates the role of assumptions in creative thinking. A second selection by David Low shows us how assumptions affect family relationships.

Is of Identity Test


Web Links

DEFINITION OF ASSUMPTION
This entry at wordreference.com explains the many meanings of the word assumption.
http://www.wordreference.com/definition/assumption

HYPOTHESIS DEFINED - American Heritage Dictionary
Compare the definitions of the word hypothesis given at the Merriam-Webster and American Heritage dictionaries.
http://www.bartleby.com/61/3/H0370300.html

JEAN PIAGET
This site is available for learning more about Jean Piaget and his theories on cognitive development.
http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/piaget.html

THESIS
"How to Write a Thesis Statement." A useful discussion prepared at Indiana University.
http://www.indiana.edu/~wts/pamphlets/thesis_statement.shtml

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CRCB -- Chapter 5: LOCATING STATED MAIN IDEAS

Main Ideas Graphic Organizers


Being able to locate an author’s main idea is key to understanding your textbook. It allows you to:

see the relationship between the main idea and the other supporting ideas
distinguishing general ideas from more specific ones

The topic is the most general idea, while the main idea is the more specific controlling idea of a piece of writing.
The details, which are the most specific:

serve to support main idea
illustrate the main idea

Four useful strategies to identify the main idea are:

Question Yourself
Look in the Usual Places
Notice Clue Words
Categorize an Author’s Points

Some main ideas are:

stated directly in a reading
easy to label once you have read the assignment
implied

Identifying stated main ideas is a good start to critically reading your textbook material.

Exercise 5-2:  Providing Main Ideas

1.      __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________They allow the expectations of parents or spouses or children or teachers or friends to control their lives.  Many adults are still trying to earn the approval of unpleasable parents.  Others are driven by peer pressure, always worried by what others might think.  Unfortunately, those who follow the crowd usually get lost in it.

2.      What struck me as I began to study history was how nationalist fervor—inculcated from childhood on by pledges of allegiance, national anthems, flags waving and rhetoric blowing—permeated the educational systems of all countries, including our own.__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Then we could never drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, or napalm on Vietnam, or wage war anywhere, because wars, especially in our time, are always wars against children, indeed our children.

3.      Columbus rightly deserves credit for many firsts, but one of his firsts has been routinely overlooked in American textbooks.  He returned from his fist voyage with ten live Indians he had kidnapped [to use as slaves], and these were paraded along with parrots through the streets and roads of Spain during his triumphant procession to Ferdinand and Isabella in Barcelona.  _____________________________________________________________