Zita Nauckūnaitė. Reasoning: didactical aspects

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Zita Nauckūnaitė. Reasoning: didactical aspects
Methodological guide. Vilnius: Institute of the Lithuanian Language, 2020. ISBN 978-609-411-259-1, https://doi.org/10.35321/e-pub.4.argumentavimas-didaktiniai-aspektai

The discussion of how to best prepare people for life is not something new, and by a long margin. The quest for effective education goes all the way back to the ancient world. Especially when it comes to rationalising based on reasoning – a key skill of communicational competence and the so-called critical thinking.

Everyone should know how to reason in an adequate and ethical manner, because, in the words of Miguel Martínez, professor with the Barcelona University, the ‘lack of reasoning competence is one of the biggest problems our society has; it often becomes an indirect cause of duress’. Not being able to reason is not just a simple limitation: it is an absence of words and syntactic constructions (logos), a mind-set based on values (ēthos), and emotional and aesthetic expression (pathos) – a sort of reasoning muteness, a silence of the mind…

Therefore, as we teach reasoning to others, we may want to remember that the logical, the value-based, and the creative dimensions correlate with the eternal categories of TRUTH, GOOD, and BEAUTY; that one must avoid manipulating a person’s consciousness when engaging in reasoning.

This methodological guide combining the experience of planning, writing, analysing, and evaluating reasoning texts, is intended for former students – teachers of the Lithuanian language and literature.