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Humanities & Social Sciences · Year 1 · Foundations
S1 Reasoning and writing
Understand, build and evaluate arguments, avoid fallacies, and write clear, structured and well-sourced texts.
220hours of coursework
22weeks at 10 h
3steps
13new courses
3universities
Target skills
- Reconstructing an argument: premises and conclusion
- Deductive and inductive reasoning
- Spotting and naming fallacies
- Grammar, punctuation and word choice
- Structuring, drafting and revising a text
- Researching and citing sources
Semester project
A 2,000-word argumentative essay on a social question, with an argument map, a formatted bibliography and two rounds of revision.
Courses this semester
- 1Duke UniversityBeginner
Stated prerequisites: No prior experience required
Show the 4 courses
Course Level Length Rating (reviews) Think Again I: How to Understand Arguments Beginner 26 h 4.6 (3,145) Think Again II: How to Reason Deductively Beginner 13 h 4.3 (428) Think Again III: How to Reason Inductively Beginner 24 h 4.6 (523) Think Again IV: How to Avoid Fallacies Beginner 18 h 4.7 (469) - 2University of California, IrvineBeginner
Stated prerequisites: No prior experience required
Show the 5 courses
Course Level Length Rating (reviews) Grammar and Punctuation — 16 h 4.7 (19,647) Getting Started with Essay Writing Intermediate 13 h 4.7 (3,295) Advanced Writing — 18 h 4.7 (1,969) Introduction to Research for Essay Writing — 19 h 4.7 (1,190) Project: Writing a Research Paper — 10 h 4.7 (514) - 3University of MichiganBeginner
Stated prerequisites: No prior experience required
Show the 4 courses
Course Level Length Rating (reviews) Writing and Editing: Word Choice and Word Order Beginner 20 h 4.7 (2,036) Writing and Editing: Structure and Organization Beginner 15 h 4.7 (576) Writing and Editing: Drafting Beginner 14 h 4.8 (374) Writing and Editing: Revising Beginner 14 h 4.8 (410)
Reading
forall x: Calgary. An Introduction to Formal LogicA. Thomas-Bolduc, R. ZachPropositional and predicate logic, to go further than Think Again.Free, CC BY 4.0
Writing Guide with HandbookOpenStaxDrafting, arguing, citing sources and revising: the curriculum’s writing handbook.Free (OpenStax)
Things to watch
- All the curriculum’s courses are in English: Academic English (UC Irvine) also works as a language refresher.
- Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking (Duke) is long (81 h): follow it at a steady pace all semester.
With Coursera Plus
This semester takes 220 hours, about 5 months at 10 hours a week. A Coursera Plus subscription gives access to most of its courses during that time.