Idioms and cliches

Today in class we listened to this piece by Frank Deford about college sports. Deford uses such lively idioms, so many that it was fun to pick them out. The question we didn't get to is, "How can our knowledge of idioms, cliches, metaphors, etc. inform and improve our reading and writing?" We'll look at this and use FCAT Explorer in the computer lab Thursday and Friday (12/13 and 12/14).

Questioning

This list from the contents of a fascinating book: Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking, is a great help in the classroom for students of any discipline. See what you think:

-- What are the issue and the conclusion? -- What are the reasons? -- Which words or phrases are ambiguous? -- What are the value conflicts and assumptions? -- What are the description assumptions? -- Are there any fallacies in the reasoning? -- How good is the evidence: intuition, appeals to authority, and testimonials? -- How good is the evidence: personal observation, case studies, research studies, and analogies? -- Are there rival causes? -- Are the statistics deceptive? -- What significant information is omitted? -- What reasonable conclusions are possible?