ENG 2206

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• CRITICAL THINKING

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How to think critically about your reading

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• Critical thinking is just an extended and focused version of the kind of
thinking we all do everyday when we set out to solve problems:
• We gather evidence, we examine options, we look at advantages and
disadvantages, and we weigh others’ opinions for possible bias.
• We inquire and reflect in order to arrive at the best possible judgement
or decision.
• A voter for example thinks and reads critically when he or she
researches candidates’ backgrounds and positions on major issues
before voting.
• You do the same when you want to buy a new phone for example
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Cultivate an attitude of inquiry
• The critical reading and thinking you do in college is different from
what you do in everyday life primarily because you’re often working
with more abstract issues and because the results of the process are
often graded.

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• You may be asked to read about an issue or theory, analyse what
you’ve read and write about your conclusions.
• Or you may need to do research in which you gather evidence,
examine it, and make a judgement.
• In either case, you’re looking at complex material and reflecting on it.

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•Read as a believer and as a doubter

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• You’ll get the most from your reading if you approach it with an open
mind, if you appreciate that it is possible to learn something even
from perspectives contrary to your own.
• A good way to engage with reading that present difficult or unfamiliar
arguments is to play what some writing experts call “believing and
doubting game”. Some refer to this as reading ‘with the grain’ and
‘against the grain’
• This approach asks you to read and respond to a piece twice, each
time adopting a dramatically different attitude.

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Believing
• To play the believing half of the game, read the piece with as much
generosity as you can muster.
• Try to see what makes the argument so compelling to the writer and
look for claims, examples or beliefs that seem reasonable or
persuasive.
• Even if you don’t agree with the writer’s overall position, you may find
enough common ground to understand it better than you would have
if you had rejected it out of hand.
• Write a paragraph exploring what seems worth believing in the piece.

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Doubting
• Read the piece a second time as a doubter. Scrutinise every
statement, for gaps, exaggerations, errors, or faulty reasoning.
• Dig out any problems you can see in the writer’s perspective, even if
you agree with it.
• Again summarise your conclusions in one paragraph.
• Focusing on weaknesses will help you guard against accepting the
argument too easily.

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Assess the writer’s qualifications
• Get into the habit of checking the writer’s
qualifications for everything you read.
• Does the writer have special expertise on a subject
from either personal experience or academic training?
• Does he/she demonstrate adequate knowledge?
• A lack of expert qualifications doesn’t necessarily
invalidate a writer’s arguments, but it should spur you
to examine them more keenly.
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Look carefully at the evidence presented
• A strong academic argument must adequately back up
its claims.
• When you read an argument, size up the quantity and
quality of its supporting evidence.
• How much evidence does the writer present? Does
the amount of support seem substantial enough for
the claims being made or does the writer rely on just
one or two examples?
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• Where does the evidence come from? Is it recent, or
is it too old that it may no longer be accurate? Does it
see trustworthy, or does the writer rely on sources of
dubious credibility?
• Is the evidence fairly and fully presented? Do you
suspect that the writer has manipulated the
information in order to make his/her case look better?

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Look closely at the writer’s claims to see if they go
beyond what the evidence actually supports

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• This is closely associated with the quality of evidence. It has to do
with how the writer applies the evidence.
• Does the writer draw conclusions beyond what his her support
warrants.
• You should question any argument that stretches its conclusions too
far.

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 Look for what’s not there, the unstated
assumptions, beliefs and values that underlie the
argument.

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• Does the writer take it for granted that he or she and the audience
share certain knowledge or beliefs when in fact they don’t?
• If what somebody takes for granted can reasonably be disputed, then
you should challenge the author’s claims.

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• The following sentence, taken from an article advocating the
legalization of drugs, contains questionable assumptions.

The violence brought about by the black market in drugs is attributable

in large part to the fact that we have chosen to make criminals out of
people who have a disease.

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Note any contradictions

• One mark of critical thinkers is that they look for places where pieces
of an argument don’t fit together.
• One author identifies one such contradiction.

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• In researching the literature on whether mothers with young children
should work outside their homes, she noticed that many of the
writers who most strongly denounced working mothers were
themselves working parents who sent their own children to day-care
centers.
• These writers however defended their use of day-care as “different”
and “better” than that of typical working mothers.
• In other words, they justified for themselves a lifestyle they
condemned for others.

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Examine the writer’s word choices to identify
underlying biases

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• Everyone has biases, it’s unavoidable, as humans we have our own
biases because we are influenced by our experiences, values and
opinions.
• So, it’s only natural that writers who want to convince others use
language that favours their point of view.
• But critical reading requires that you be sensitive to such biases so
that you aren’t unknowingly swayed by them.

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• As you read articles in which writers lay out arguments or draw
conclusions learn to run a ‘bias detector’ in the process.
• Being a critical reader doesn’t mean you have to distrust everything
you read.
• But be alert when writers overload their writing with what
rhetoricians call “god terms” (words like democratic, progressive, or
natural)
• Or with “devil terms” (words like destructive, immoral or selfish)

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Be skeptical of simple solutions to complex
problems, and resist black and white
thinking.

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• Be wary of arguments or explanations that offer quick easy answers to
difficult problems.
• Critical thinkers realize that most serious problems in our society are
so complex that anyone who hopes to write about them intelligently
must resist casting those involved as “good guys” and “bad guys” or
suggesting that the problem could be solved quickly if someone
would just do the right thing. What is that right thing?

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• Any solution to a problem, however perfect it may seem, always has
consequences.
• So as you read an argument, look for evidence that the writer has
neglected to consider long term implications.
• For example, if you raise the minimum wage, some employers will
hire fewer people.

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• As a critical reader, always be skeptical about
arguments that overstate their claims in this way

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