Fallacy Resources
There are many excellent resources on logical fallacies and the fundamentals of critical thinking available, both on-line and off-. These are some of the best texts that I’ve found so far.
One of the most accessible, useful, and entertaining resources is Nigel Warburton’s Thinking from A-Z. Warburton finds ways of making ideas memorable, with vivid illustrations and terminology, coining terms like “Humptydumptying” and “Zig-Zagging”. This makes an excellent text for students just starting to think about thinking.
A more structured guide to reasoning for beginners is Anthony Weston’s A Rulebook for Arguments. The book begins by setting out principles that ought to be followed in constructing arguments: start from reliable assumptions, avoid loaded language, use terms consistently, etc. It then explores various argument types, e.g. arguments from analogy, from authority, and causal arguments, and how to avoid misusing them. The book closes with some spot-on advice on how to construct an argumentative essay that all students would do well to follow. Overall, this is practical, clear, and definitely recommended.
The most theoretical of the books that I’d recommend for students of informal logic is Alec Fisher’s Critical Thinking. This is in many ways a traditional text, with explanations of key concepts, and stimulus questions to help you to process the information presented. Fisher has also written The Logic of Real Arguments, which, unlike most other logic texts, introduces methods of critical analysis using passages of text of the kind that students are likely to have to analyse on their other courses.