Critical Thinking Skills for Reading and Writing

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY CRITICAL THINKING?

When you are thinking critically, you are not just thinking passively and accepting everything you see and hear. You are thinking actively. You are asking questions about what you see and hear, evaluating, categorising, and finding relationships.

Some critical thinking activities are listed below:

SOME OF THE ACTIVITIES INVOLVED IN CRITICAL THINKING

Interpreting according to a framework

Relating theory to practice

Making a claim and supporting it

Using appropriate evidence

Making links between ideas

Asking questions

Evaluating

Predicting

Describing

Analysing

Synthesising

Categorising

Establishing cause and effect

Comparing and contrasting

Identifying problems and solutions

Critical thinking is the essence of tertiary learning. As a university student, you will be expected to apply mental actions such as these to all your academic reading, writing, listening and discussing.

Critical writing depends on critical reading. Most of the papers you write will involve reflection on written texts – the thinking and research that has already been done on your subject. In order to write your own analysis of this subject, you will need to do careful critical reading of sources and to use them critically to make your own argument. The judgments and interpretations you make of the texts you read are the first steps towards formulating your own approach.

Critical Reading: What is It?

To read critically is to make judgements about how a text is argued. This is a highly reflective skill requiring you to “stand back” and gain some distance from the text you are reading. (You might have to read a text through once to get a basic grasp of content before you launch into an intensive critical reading.) THE KEY IS THIS:

  • don’t read looking only or primarily for information
  • do read looking for ways of thinking about the subject matter

When you are reading, highlighting, or taking notes, avoid extracting and compiling lists of evidence, lists of facts and examples. Avoid approaching a text by asking “What information can I get out of it?” Rather ask “How does this text work? How is it argued? How is the evidence (the facts, examples, etc.) used and interpreted? How does the text reach its conclusions?

How Do I Read Looking for Ways of Thinking?

  1. First determine the central claims or purpose of the text (its thesis). A critical reading attempts to assess how these central claims are developed or argued.
  2. Begin to make some judgements about context . What audience is the text written for? Who is it in dialogue with? (This will probably be other scholars or authors with differing viewpoints.) In what historical context is it written? All these matters of context can contribute to your assessment of what is going on in a text.
  3. Distinguish the kinds of reasoning the text employs. What concepts are defined and used? Does the text appeal to a theory or theories? Is any specific methodology laid out? If there is an appeal to a particular concept, theory, or method, how is that concept, theory, or method then used to organize and interpret the data? You might also examine how the text is organized: how has the author analyzed (broken down) the material? Be aware that different disciplines (i.e. history, sociology, philosophy, biology) will have different ways of arguing.
  4. Examine the evidence (the supporting facts, examples, etc) the text employs. Supporting evidence is indispensable to an argument. Having worked through Steps 1-3, you are now in a position to grasp how the evidence is used to develop the argument and its controlling claims and concepts. Steps 1-3 allow you to see evidence in its context. Consider the kinds of evidence that are used. What counts as evidence in this argument? Is the evidence statistical? literary? historical? etc. From what sources is the evidence taken? Are these sources primary or secondary?
  5. Critical reading may involve evaluation. Your reading of a text is already critical if it accounts for and makes a series of judgments about how a text is argued. However, some essays may also require you to assess the strengths and weaknesses of an argument. If the argument is strong, why? Could it be better or differently supported? Are there gaps, leaps, or inconsistencies in the argument? Is the method of analysis problematic? Could the evidence be interpreted differently? Are the conclusions warranted by the evidence presented? What are the unargued assumptions? Are they problematic? What might an opposing argument be?

Defining critical thinking

Critical thinking has been defined in many different ways. Very broad definitions include ’thinking
which has a purpose’ or ‘reflective judgement’. However, these definitions are often too general to
be useful to students.

Let’s begin by reflecting on some approaches that critical thinkers may or may not take to
problems and issues.

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