You use critical thinking skills every day - think about the process you go

through when you buy a new piece of equipment, or choosing where to go on

holiday. At university you need to use critical thinking skills in your reading,
and demonstrate critical thinking skills in your writing.

Critical thinking is the process of applying reasoned and disciplined thinking

to a subject. To do well in your studies you need to think 'critically' about
the things you have read, seen or heard. Acquiring critical thinking skills
helps you to develop more reasoned arguments and draw out the inferences
that you need to use in your assignments, projects and examination
questions.

These skills are essential if you want to obtain high grades in your university
study and, like other skills, they improve with practice.

What is critical thinking?

Critical thinking involves reading and writing critically. Reading critically

means examining different points of view with an open and enquiring mind,
evaluating your own position, and drawing conclusions as to whether a
particular point of view is persuasive. Writing critically means presenting
your conclusions in a clear and well-reasoned way to persuade others.

When you think critically, you:

• analyse - break things down

• synthesise - bring parts together in a coherent way
• evaluate - make judgements, based on sound evidence

Critical thinkers ... A Critical thinker will..

 pay attention to detail
 consider different points of
view
 evaluate their own position
 develop an accurate
understanding of an issue
 identify trends and predict
outcomes
 consider broad implications
and long-term consequences.
 Critically analyse the task
 Identify the authors purpose
and position
 Consider whether the evidence
presented is sufficient
 Identify any flaws in the
authors reasoning
 Determine whether the authors

Remember: keep an open and enquiring mind, so you can recognise different
viewpoints

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Developing Critical Thinking

There are stages and skills in developing critical thinking:

1. Process - Take in the information (i.e. in what you have read, heard,
seen or done).

2. Understand - Comprehend the key points, assumptions, arguments

and evidence presented.

3. Analyse - Examine how these key components fit together and relate
to each other.

4. Compare - Explore the similarities, differences between the ideas you

are reading about.

5. Synthesise - Bring together different sources of information to serve

an argument or idea you are constructing. Make logical connections
between the different sources that help you shape and support your
ideas.

6. Evaluate - Assess the worth of an idea in terms of its relevance to your

needs, the evidence on which it is based and how it relates to other
pertinent ideas.

7. Apply - Transfer the understanding you have gained from your critical
evaluation and use in response to questions, assignments and
projects.

8. Justify - Use critical thinking to develop arguments, draw conclusions,

make inferences and identify implications.

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Ways to develop critical thinking
Critical thinking skills are essential requirements if you want to obtain high
grades in your university study and, like other skills, they will improve with
practice.

Method How it can help

Gives structure to your study time and provides regular
Study in bite-sized
opportunities to think critically about your learning materials
chunks
and activities.
Thinking is part of active learning. You need to pause at
appropriate points to check that you understand what you are
studying and revisit any parts you have found difficult. This is
Pause for thought
a good time to make some notes and add your own comments
on the topic. Make sure that your comments are supported by
evidence or reasoning.
Whatever learning activity you do or learning materials you
Learn actively use, make sure you actively and critically engage with the
content.
An essential aspect of critical thinking is to question what is
Question what is being said. In academic study you must be able to justify a
being said position or claim you make by reference to other sources of
evidence.
To understand and critically evaluate learning materials you
Is the whole more
need to be able to analyse and interpret the content so you can
than the sum of the
identify the different parts and examine how they fit together
parts?
as a whole.
The use of evidence is an important aspect of academic study.
Evaluating sources
Critical thinking involves examining evidence and establishing
of information
its worth when compared with other evidence.
Independent thought is important to critical thinking,
especially at higher levels of study. You will be expected to
Think
evaluate and synthesise information from a variety of sources
independently
and present your own interpretation of the information,
logically and coherently.
Apply critical thought to your assignments, projects and
examination questions. This is where your critical thinking
Make it count skills really count. The higher grades at every level of
university study require some critical analysis, reflection and
evaluation.
When you write assignments and projects, or answer
examinations questions, think about whether you have been
objective. Have you shown any bias or preference?
Be objective An essential part of critical thinking is self reflection. When
you receive an assignment back don't just look at the grade,
think about the feedback and how you can build on it to
improve your next assignment.
If you are not confident about your critical thinking skills, test
Work with other
them out in discussion with other students through tutorials,
students
self-help groups and course forums.

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Some of the various purposes for reading include:

1. Sheer pleasure: requires no particular skill level

2. To figure out a simple idea: which may require skimming the text
3. To gain specific technical information: skimming skills required
4. To enter, understand, and appreciate a new world-view: requires close
reading skills in working through a challenging series of tasks that
stretch our minds
5. To learn a new subject: requires close reading skills in internalizing
and taking ownership of an organized system of meanings

How you read should be determined in part by what you read. Reflective
readers read a textbook, for example, using a different mindset than they
use when reading an article in a newspaper. The reflective mind interacts
with the author’s thinking. In this interaction, the reader’s mind reconstructs
the author’s thinking. It does this through a process of inner dialogue with
the sentences of the text, assessing each sentence for its intelligibility and
questioning in a disciplined way:
• Can I summarize the meaning of this text in my own words?
• What is clear to me and what do I need clarified?

Carefully reading a paragraph involves finding the idea or question that is

the driving force within the paragraph. Finding key paragraphs consists of
finding the ideas or questions that are the driving force within the book.
Structural reading, you will remember, is an important means by which we
locate key paragraphs.

All paragraphs within a written piece should connect to every other

paragraph so that we can see logical connections between ideas. All ideas
should form a system of meanings. As you move from paragraph to
paragraph, ask:
• What is the most important idea in this paragraph?
• How do the ideas in this paragraph relate to the ideas in
previous paragraphs?
• How are the important ideas in the text connected?

There are two books I would recommend for developing critical thinking
skills:

Fisher, A. (2009) Critical Thinking: An Introduction, Cambridge University

Press: Cambridge

Fisher, A. (2004) The logic of real arguments, Cambridge University Press,

Cambridge  

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