READING SEMINAR Ph.D.

Bessy Mendoza

II PAC 2023

MODULE 5- CRITICAL READING

GROUP: 4

WEEK
Jul. 3-6
STUDENT´S NAME: ________________________________________DATE___________________GRADE /8

I. INTRODUCTION
When talking about critical reading, the word ‘critical’ means that you do not simply take ideas in a text for granted, but that you evaluate
the evidence and arguments. Your critical reading process could start with the assumption that texts are not neutral but try to influence
the reader in some way and are themselves influenced by the writer’s beliefs, attitudes, and culture. This process often involves
identifying the author’s beliefs and opinions as they are expressed in the text and understanding how these influence the message. When
you decide which parts of the text are most important, which are more or less persuasive for your purposes, or which parts are most
controversial, you are engaging critically with the text. A further step would be to relate the text to your own existing knowledge and
beliefs.
In short, critical reading involves taking an extra (mental) step after comprehension, so that you are able to evaluate the text, draw
conclusions and make inferences. Critical reading is effectively using analysis and combining your own knowledge and beliefs with the
ideas in the text in order to learn from the passage.
By the end of this module, you will be able to...

• read between the lines, that is, understand the hidden messages of written texts;
• apply critical reading skills to English texts;
• evaluate the quality of text contents;
• see how texts persuade us to behave or think in particular ways;
• see how texts may be read in different ways by different people.
•
 READING SEMINAR Ph.D. Bessy Mendoza

Reading critically
Watch the video below for an introduction on how to read critically.
https://youtu.be/9Ed34avNAZ4

II. WHAT IS CRITICAL READING?

The word ‘critical’ means that you do not simply take ideas in a text for granted, but that you evaluate the evidence and arguments. Your
critical reading process could start with the assumption that texts are not neutral but try to influence the reader in some way and are
themselves influenced by the writer’s beliefs, attitudes, and culture. This process often involves identifying the author’s beliefs and
opinions as they are expressed in the text and understanding how these influence the message. When you decide which parts of the text
are most important, which are more or less persuasive for your purposes, or which parts are most controversial, you are engaging
critically with the text. A further step would be to relate the text to your own existing knowledge and beliefs.
In short, critical reading involves taking an extra (mental) step after comprehension, so that you are able to evaluate the text, draw
conclusions and make inferences. Critical reading is effectively using analysis and combining your own knowledge and beliefs with the
ideas in the text in order to learn from the passage.
How do texts persuade us?
The first step towards reading texts more critically is to be aware of when and how a text may try to persuade you. There are three main
strategies to try and persuade the reader:

1. Word choice: By using words and phrases that have positive or negative meanings, texts can influence our feelings regarding
the content of the text. We distinguish between denotation and connotation. Denotation is about the meaning of the word as you
can find it in a dictionary whereas connotation is about the feeling you have about a word. Take for example ‘He is a very unique
boy’ and ‘He is a very peculiar boy’. Unique and peculiar both have the denotation of distinctive in nature or character from
others. Their connotation is quite different, however. The connotation of the word peculiar is negative while the connotation of
the word unique is more positive. This makes the first sentence more appealing and positive; the second sentence would sound
more judgmental or even insulting.
2. Omitting information: Texts may also leave out certain information, especially when this contradicts or challenges the
arguments presented in the text. For example, if an author wants to give the reader a negative impression of a historical figure,
they might only mention the figure’s bad actions and poor decisions and leave out the positive things they’ve done. In an
academic article, an author may have omitted evidence from previous studies that contradict their own argument.
 READING SEMINAR Ph.D. Bessy Mendoza

3. Implication: Texts may imply certain information rather than explicitly state it. We’ll look at this means of persuasion in more
detail when we discuss making inferences and analyzing arguments.

TASK 1
In the following examples, identify the word or phrase that was used to persuade you and how it does this.

1. I recognized the stench of my roommate’s cooking as I entered the apartment.

2. Journalists have no right to snooping in the royal family’s private lives.
3. Phileas Fogg was an intrepid traveller.
4. It’s about time they do something about these vagrants loitering about the park.
5. A gathering assembled in front of parliament to protest the proposed law.

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III. WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO DEVELOP CRITICAL READING SKILLS?

Many texts are more persuasive than you might initially think. In the case of an advertisement or a newspaper column, it is obvious that
these are aimed at convincing the reader of a certain viewpoint. But also a news report aims to persuade us that the story presented is
true, a literary text wants us to accept that its characters and places are real and that they mirror our own experiences. Even academic
research reports are persuasive in that their writers attempt to convince us that the report’s conclusions are valid.
 READING SEMINAR Ph.D. Bessy Mendoza

Let’s look at the role that critical reading plays in the academic world. Just because something is claimed in an official report or
(academic or peer-reviewed) publication, it does not mean that it is accurate per se. Something else to bear in mind is that the quality of
(academic) research varies, which is why being able to critique is so important. Now that so much information can be easily shared
online without any screening or review, it has become even more important to question the content we consume.
Academic courses require more of you than mere reading comprehension. You should also be able to react to and recall information and
integrate the information from any (required) readings in your own thinking and work. Without these skills, you may find academic
reading unexpectedly difficult and demanding because you feel uninformed and underprepared for the demands and expectations from
lecturers. You will need to be more than a ‘surface reader’ and with the skills and strategies that will be presented in the following
sections, you’re well on your way!

IV. DISTINGUISHING FACT AND OPINION

Facts and opinions
Now that you know about the ways texts persuade us, it is also important to know the difference between facts and opinions and how to
recognize them.
Facts are statements that can be verified and are always objective. A fact contains no opinion of the author and a fact can be proven.
For example: I pay 500 euros per month for my room.
Opinions express the meaning of an author or his attitudes or beliefs. They cannot be proven true or false. You often see opinions in
controversial topics, when the future is predicted or when opinions are expressed about people, things or places. For example: 500 euros
for a room is too expensive.

Recognizing facts and opinions

How to recognize a fact?
Ask yourself the following questions:

1. Can the statement be proved or demonstrated? For example, by witnesses or documents?

2. Can you see it happen in practice?
 READING SEMINAR Ph.D. Bessy Mendoza

How to recognize an opinion?

1. You see biased words (worst, good, worthless, ..)

2. You see qualifiers (always, likely, possibly, should, …)

Distinguishing between facts and opinions

The ability to distinguish between opinions and facts is very important while reading. A good reader should be aware of the purpose of
the author. For example, does the author want to convince you? Entertain? Inform? If you know the author's purpose, you can be more
critical of the information you get. Is the information presented as fact really a fact? Or is it the author's opinion?
Use the following questions if you want to find out what the author's purpose is:

1. Who is the author of the text? What is his occupation? Is the author an authority on the subject? Does he work for a specific
company that benefits from the publication?
2. What is the aim of the text? (e.g.: informing, teaching, entertaining, persuasion)
3. Who was it written for? (other specialists in the field, consumers, general readers etc)
4. Does the text reach its goal? That is to say, an informative text may have an additional purpose beyond being informative. Does
this text want to persuade you to something, such as make a purchase?

TASK 2
Look at the blogs below.
In each case, consider the author, purpose, and intended readership. Answer the questions you have seen above.

• Blog 2 https://libguides.uvt.nl/ld.php?content_id=34146969 Xi Jinping Speech

• Blog 3 https://libguides.uvt.nl/ld.php?content_id=34146971 Social Networks in College

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 READING SEMINAR Ph.D. Bessy Mendoza

2.__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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TASK 3
Read the following statements and decide whether they are facts or opinions.

1. Albert Einstein is generally considered one of the most important physicists in history. __________________________
2. Einstein was best known for his two theories of relativity.__________________________________________________
3. He shouldn't have gone to the US to continue his career.____________________________________________________

V. MAKING INFERENCES

Distinguishing facts and opinions is a great first step towards reading texts more critically, but there is more. Another important critical
reading skills is making inferences. When you make inferences, or infer, you draw conclusions based on evidence from the text or
knowledge that you have. Texts contain many explicit details such as dates, names or descriptions, but also implicit information like
how the author feels about a topic or whether they agree with someone else. This information is not explicitly stated; you need to ‘read
between the lines’ or use certain information to form your own conclusions as a reader. In life, we infer meaning all the time. For
example, when someone slams the door, you infer that that person is in a bad mood. Or if you see someone pull a face when trying a
food, you infer that they don’t like it.
 READING SEMINAR Ph.D. Bessy Mendoza

Being able to infer meaning from a text means that you can develop an understanding of the text that goes beyond the surface level. You
will be able to pick up on subtle meanings, the author’s opinions and attitudes and maybe even their biasesor prejudices. To be able to
make inferences, you need to combine new information with existing knowledge, interpret the language the author uses, compare what
you read against expectations you had before you started reading, and evaluate what the goals and attitudes of the author are. In other
words, to infer you need to ask yourself what conclusions you can draw from the text and what evidence from the text and from your
own knowledge and expectations you have for those conclusions.
TASK 4
Infer what is happening in these situations:

1. A man arrives at the home of a woman with red roses and a diamond ring.
2. Your neighbors’ new car in front of their house in the morning. All four tires are flat.
3. A colleague tells you “If he died, I wouldn’t go to his funeral.”
4. You see a man run after a departing bus, frantically waving his briefcase.
5. You are giving a presentation in class and see that some classmates are laughing behind their hands and pointing to the region
below your waist.

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 READING SEMINAR Ph.D. Bessy Mendoza

TASK 5

The following passages are from the article ‘Millennials in the Workplace: A Communication Perspective on Millennials’ Organizational
Relationships and Performance’ by K. Myers (2010). Read the passage and answer the questions using your inferencing skills.

1. “Stereotypes about Millennials, born between 1979 and 1994, depict them as self-centred, unmotivated, disrespectful, and
disloyal, contributing to widespread concern about how communication with Millennials will affect organizations and how
they will develop relationships with other organizational members. We review these purported characteristics...”

a. Does the writer agree with the negative descriptions of millennials presented in the passage? Why/ discuss.

2. “Future research in this area will need to shed light on the functionality of newer CITs [computer and information
technology] in organizations, the impact of CIT use on older generations, and Millennials’ potential to change the way CITs
are used to communicate intra-organizationally, as well as for the strategic advantage of organizations. Research could also
examine how Millennials’ attitudes toward CITs change once they have experience in using CITs in the workplace (rather than
just socially), and how older generations’ attitudes toward CITs might change as a result of Millennials’ influence in the
workplace. Millennials may discover that newer technology is not always the most efficient, nor the best media for developing
and maintaining workplace relationships (compared with face-to-face interactions with coworkers and customers).”

a. Does the author think that communication and information technology is currently used to their fullest extent
when companies communicate with each other? Why/ discuss.
 READING SEMINAR Ph.D. Bessy Mendoza

b. Does the author think that communication over technology is always effective in the workplace? Why/ discuss.

3. “A more productive goal may be to focus on what each generation offers to team and organizational performance, and how
these qualities affect workplace communication, behaviors, and relationships (McCann and Giles 2006). To date, the lack of
such research is sadly noteworthy (McCann and Giles 2006).”

a. How does the author feel about how companies try to integrate millennials into the workplace? Why/ discuss.

b. What does the author probably think about doing more research into the effects of differences in professional
communication skills between generations? Why/ discuss.

VI. ANALYZING ARGUMENTS

It’s important to find out if arguments made in, for example, academic texts are based on evidence or only the author’s personal
viewpoints. Note that an argument does not only mean giving or exchanging an opinion, but the whole set of a statement and the reason
or reasons given to support it. After you have evaluated an argument, you can make the decision to accept the argument or to reject it.
To be able to do this, you need to analyze the validity of the argument, in other words whether the reasons given for a statement support
it sufficiently. An argument consists of three elements:

1. Claim: the opinion or conclusion that the author is asking their audience to accept, e.g. “Learning to read a text critically is
important for university students.”
2. Grounds: the evidence, such as data or facts, or support which explains why the claim should be accepted, e.g. “Reading a text
critically allows students to assess the quality of the arguments in it and whether they should accept them as true.”
 READING SEMINAR Ph.D. Bessy Mendoza

3. Warrant: the link between claim and grounds, or the (often implicit) assumption the reader has to accept to agree that the
grounds support the claim, e.g. “University students are expected to be able to assess arguments and their support in all of their
coursework.”

It is often the case that an argument is less strong than it may seem at first sight because the warrant that the argument relies on is faulty
or simply not true. For example, if you read that “most people know that critical reading is an important skill at university,” you must
first accept that what most people know is automatically true. This is, of course, not always the case. Similarly, if you see the claim that
“80% of students who learned to read critically in the first semester of their studies went on to complete their bachelor’s degree within
three years”, you could wonder whether this happened because these students learned to read critically or if other factors caused or
contributed to their success.
TASK 6
In the following arguments, a) identify the implicit assumptions, or warrants, that the argument is based on; and b) decide if the
argument is a strong or weak one. Why/ discuss

1. James thoroughly understands the material which is why he scored well on his exam.

2. It should not be illegal for adults to smoke marijuana. After all, it does not harm anyone.

3. People are not engaging with our website, so it must be because they don’t know where to find it.

4. Richard III’s body was found under a car park in Leicester, and he fell nearby in Bosworth Field, so it is only right that he
should be re-buried in Leicester.
 READING SEMINAR Ph.D. Bessy Mendoza

5. New medical studies show that if the average employee improves their physical health, then their productivity also increases
significantly. Companies should therefore introduce mandatory exercise programs every morning in order to increase
productivity.

VII. EVALUATING TEXTS

You have seen some ways to assess argumentation based on the validity of the argumentation itself, who the author is and strategies that
authors could use to try to convince you of their opinion. The following checklists give you more tools to evaluate the reliability of texts.
These tools can help you assess reliability in general, but also to determine whether or not a text that might be reliable is appropriate for
use in your own work. This also covers issues of relevance. Tools at your disposal include:

1. Authority: who is the author? Are they knowledgeable on the subject? What is their expertise and have they published more
articles? But also, is the author writing on behalf of an organization, a university or are they unaffiliated?
2. Accuracy: can you find similar information in other sources or does it contradict existing information? Does the author cite other
reliable sources?
3. Objectivity: is the information unbiased? Does the author present multiple views? Are all relevant data presented, even if they
do not support an opposing view? Doyou find support for the views?
4. Coverage: how well does this information cover the topic? Does it go sufficiently into depth and does it discuss all aspects of
the topic fully?
5. Currency: was the information published recently enough to be reliable? Are the citations current enough?
6. Audience: who was this information written for? Was it written for experts or more for the general public? How could this
influence the content presented?
 READING SEMINAR Ph.D. Bessy Mendoza

TASK 7
Have another look at the text about Millenials in the Workplace. Then answer the following questions about this article.

1. Is the methodology used in the research described clearly? Does the author acknowledge any weaknesses in the methodology?
Can you see any weaknesses? Why/ discuss

2. How strong is the evidence? Is there any obvious influence or bias? Why/ discuss

3. Are the interpretations made reasonable? Do they clearly link to the evidence presented? Why/ discuss

4. How does the study fit in with other research on the subject? Does this study support other research or does it contradict it? Why/
discuss

5. Am I prepared to support the author’s claims? Why/ discuss

Tip: use this checklist when evaluating your own sources as well.