understanding what critical reading is

Critical reading and  thinking is taking a piece of information, whether you read it or heard it, and asking the who, where, when, why, what and how’s of it, and you concluding as to whether or not you agree or disagree with the information. Critical thinking is a vital skill that everybody from different walks of life does without even realising it. Whether it be from gossiping to discussing a topic at college, we are critically analysing the information we heard. We don’t need to decide straight away whether or not we believe this new information, critical thinking allows us to form the opinions and other information we need to validate this information. This process incorporates passion and creativity whilst also keeping discipline, practicality and common sense as main contributing factors. The hardest thing I find about critical thinking is trying to put the concept of it down in words. Linda Elder, a member of The Critical Thinking Community, in 2007  states that critical thinking is "self-guided, self-disciplined thinking which attempts to reason at the highest level of quality in a fair-minded way. People who think critically consistently attempt to live rationally, reasonably, empathically." Information is something that we are faced with on a day-to-day bases. Critical thinking helps us to deal with this information. In college we were given a link on our college page which was linked to The University of Plymouth                              http://itblibrary.blogspot.ie/search?q=critical+thinking  

This I found to be an excellent model because it broke it down, so instead of reading pages after pages I was looking at a picture which broke down all the necessary information.

I had researched the topic for a while before I understood how to explain it. This picture helped me to understand it the most. Critical thinking is broken down into 3 stages: description, analysis and evaluation.

1.           The description is asking us to describe it: what? When? Who? Where?

2.            .Analysing it:  Why? How?

3.              Evaluation: what if? So what? What next?

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Reference list:

• ·         ITB Library. 2011. [online] available at:  http://itblibrary.blogspot.ie/search?q=critical+thinking [Accessed on the 11^th of December 2013].
• ·         The Critical Thinking Community. [online] available at:  http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/defining-critical-thinking/766 [Accessed the 11th of /December]

Bibliography:

• ·         Cooke, D. 2013. Communications and the Learning Enviroment, Lecture Notes. ITB
• ·         How The Language Really Works: the Fundaments of Critical Reading and Effective Writing. [online] available at:  http://www.criticalreading.com/critical_thinking.htm  [Accessed the 11th of December 2013]
• ·         ITB Library. 2011. [online] available at:  http://itblibrary.blogspot.ie/search?q=critical+thinking [Accessed on the 11^th of December 2013].