Thursday, 6 December 2012

3. Explain the concept of critical reading/thinking to a person unfamiliar with it using examples to help



Critical thinking is a desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider... (Francis Bacon1605). Critical thinking is an essential part of the academic world. It helps to evaluate theories and ideas. It forces us to not be complacent in our reading. Above all critical thinking is about asking questions. Who wrote this? Is his research valid? Does he use graphs/diagrams properly? What is the tone of the article? Do you agree/disagree? To be a critical thinker you must collect and study all relevant information, assess it fairly and try to work out what is fact and what is opinion. Any theory must be tested. It must also be recognised that the author may be biased in some way. It requires many complex skills to be a critical thinker. It is essential to analyse the task, you must compare and contrast theories/ideas, and you must judge fairly and judge all resources for validity. It is not a personal opinion, but asking what if? What are the consequences? what is the outcome? The most difficult part of critical thinking is recognising that your own opinion/prejudices may cloud your thinking. It is essential to be open to ideas which challenge your own. An example of critical thinking is to consider a teenager using drugs- theories would suggest that this maybe because he has a low level of emotional intelligence or because he is from a single parent family or because he is a middle child. All theories would have to be studied and questioned in order for critical thinking to take place.

 

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