Comprehensive Guide to University Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing
Core Learning Objectives of Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing
- After studying this material, students should be able to: - Understand the concept of context, specifically regarding purpose, audience, voice, and medium. - Apply critical thinking skills to both reading and writing tasks. - Successfully read and write for the college environment.
1a: The Writing Project as a Conversation
- Writing is often perceived as a permanent document subject to judgment, which can make starting difficult.
- It is more helpful to view writing as a conversation.
- You always write for someone. Writing targets include: - Yourself (personal notes). - Individuals: Teachers, supervisors, or friends. - Groups: Classes, work groups, or hiring committees.
- Writing is influenced by your knowledge, reading, thinking, and the expectations of your audience.
1b: Elements of Understanding Context
Understanding the context of a writing project involves four primary elements: purpose, audience, voice, and medium.
Purpose
Your purpose determines the options for presenting your final text. Common purposes in academic and professional writing includes:
- Expository Writing: To explain an idea or theory or to explore a question.
- Analytical Writing: To analyze the structure or content of a text.
- Technical or Scientific Writing: To report on a process, experiment, or lab results.
- Business Writing: To provide a status update on a project at work.
- Persuasive or Argumentative Writing: To persuade readers to understand a point of view, change their minds, or take action.
- Expressive Writing: To record and reflect on personal experiences and feelings.
- Narrative Writing: To tell a story, whether imaginative or real.
Audience
- Writers must keep readers in mind at all times.
- Readers vary by region, community, ethnic group, organization, and academic discipline, each with unique linguistic and rhetorical conventions.
- Writers possess "shifting selves" depending on the audience; style changes when texting a friend versus writing a college essay or a grant application.
Voice
- Definition: The way a writer comes across to readers and the impression formed regarding the writer's values and opinions.
- Unobtrusive Voice: Typical in academic, business, and news reporting. The writer appears knowledgeable and authoritative, letting content take precedence.
- The Use of "I": - Glen McClish (Chair of Rhetoric and Writing Studies at San Diego State University) demonstrates that removing first-person pronouns makes a text more forceful and confident, presenting ideas as facts rather than personal opinions. - Example: Changing "In the first section of my paper, I want to make the point that…" to a version without the "I" phrase. - William Zinsser (On Writing Well) suggests good writers are visible behind their words through a sense of "I-ness." He recommends thinking of or even writing "I" in first drafts and editing it out later. - Language and Culture Note: Views on "I" vary. Scholarly journals in the humanities now accept it, whereas sciences and social sciences often prefer a neutral voice unless specific writer information is required. Always ask the instructor for the specific policy.
- Avoid "leaden" effects from I-avoiding phrases like "it would seem" or "it is to be expected that" and overusing the pronoun "one."
Medium
- Consider the delivery method: print document, document with embedded images, multimedia presentation, or online document with hyperlinks and video.
- Accessibility Considerations: - Online images: Check if readers have reliable high-speed connections before posting large files. - Visual impairment: Increase type size, provide zoom functions, describe visuals in words. - Contrast: High contrast colors work better for some viewers. - Use online accessibility assessment sites to test documents.
1c: Critical Thinking Framework
- Texts in academic, personal, and professional settings are influenced by contexts that affect interpretation.
- Critical Thinking: Careful, reflective consideration given to a text through close reading and deliberate writing while considering multiple perspectives. It is not about finding fault.
- Understanding the relationship between purpose, audience, voice, and medium is essential to critical thinking.
1d: Reading and Writing in College
- Genres: Types of writing including reports, essays, letters, lists, online messages, novels, poems, plays, memos, résumés, and proposals.
- Awareness of genre helps manage tasks and save time because genre is tied to context elements.
Reading Strategies
- Skimming: Finding what is relevant to decide if closer reading is needed.
- Reading for Information: Understanding and remembering important facts (useful for exams).
- Close Reading: Examining how context impacts how a piece is written and understood (useful for literary analysis).
Conventions and Code
- Conventions: Writing practices associated with a genre (e.g., abbreviations and shortcuts in texts).
- Using the correct "code" is essential; academic writing has a formal code that would sound ridiculous in a text message, and vice versa.
Steps to Becoming a Close Reader
- Do multiple readings: Start with skimming, then examine slowly while annotating.
- Look for common ground: Note points of agreement.
- Question and challenge: Act as a mental debater. Assess logic, biases, and fairness to opposing views.
- Write as you read: Annotate margins, word processors, or blogs to start a conversation with the text. A "messy" text is a good sign of engagement.
- Acknowledge critical readers: Your own writing will also face scrutiny from others.
2a: Using Critical Thinking to Focus a Topic
- Writing is a messy, non-linear process involving several overlapping activities: Planning & Prewriting, Drafting, Reading & Feedback, Revising, and Editing.
- Creative Prewriting Examples: - Dame Edith Sitwell (poet): Lay in an open coffin. - Colette (French novelist): Picked fleas from her cat. - Benjamin Franklin (statesman): Soaked in the bathtub. - Friedrich Schiller (German dramatist): Sniffed rotten apples.
- Focusing Strategies: - Consider your interests to maintain voice and sustain effort. - Review assignment prompts carefully for keywords: define, describe, compare, contrast, provide an example, analyze, annotate, summarize. - Adapting to Boring Topics: Look for a human angle or a scientific perspective. Example: A biology student analyzing The Scarlet Letter through the lens of medicinal herbs and metabolic metaphors.
- Journaling: - Double-entry journal: Left side for summaries/quotes/data; right side for personal comments/reactions. - Blogs: Publicly "thinking aloud" and engaging in social conversation. Example: Tiffany Brattina’s blog on Death of a Salesman.
2b: Strategies for Getting Started
- Freewriting: Writing for to minutes without concern for correctness. Use symbols like
[or#for missing words. - Jimmy Wong example: Freewriting about baseball uniforms led to a focus on unity-building effects. - Looping: Highlighting the most important idea from a freewrite and freewriting on that specifically.
- Brainstorming: Making a list of ideas, often enhanced by group collaboration. (e.g., brainstorming on what uniforms signify based on Paul Fussell's Uniforms: Why We Are What We Wear).
- Responding to Readings: Use starters like "When I read X, I think of…" or "I find X's arguments convincing because…"
2c: Finding Focus and the Thesis Statement
- Main Idea: The unifying message or opinion of the writing.
- Thesis Statement: A sentence making a specific claim supported by reasons and evidence.
- Continuum of Focus: Subject area $\rightarrow$ Topic $\rightarrow$ Key Question $\rightarrow$ Main Idea/Thesis. - Example: Social Networking $\rightarrow$ Right to privacy and data usage $\rightarrow$ "Is privacy violated when law enforcement uses social media?" $\rightarrow$ Thesis regarding law enforcement and cyberbullies.
2d: Drafting and Outlining
- Formal Outline: Follows specific numbering/lettering (I, A, B, 1, 2) to organize points and evidence.
- Drafting Tips: - Set a schedule working backward from the deadline. - Manage writer's block by ignoring rigid rules; avoid early editing. - Don't start at the beginning; write sections with the most material first. - Pace yourself in increments of to minutes. - Resist "Copy and Paste" to avoid plagiarism (see section 9a). - Use word processor "Comment" and "AutoCorrect" functions for efficiency.
2e: Paragraph Structure and Unity
- Unity: A good paragraph focuses on one clear topic and supports the main idea.
- Indentation: Indent the first line inch ( inches) or use a blank line in business documents.
- Begin a new paragraph to: - Introduce a new point. - Expand on a point with new examples. - Break up long discussions.
- Topic Sentences: Explicitly state the main point of the paragraph. - Placement at the start: Serves as a generalization/reference point. - Placement after details: Focuses the details on the main idea. - Placement at the end: Summarizes or draws conclusions. - Example of poor unity: A paragraph about weekend tennis players' backhands that suddenly discusses Serena Williams' serve.
2f: Coherence and Transitions
- Avoid "grasshopper prose" (jumping between ideas).
- Transitional Expressions: - Adding an idea: also, furthermore, moreover. - Contrasting: however, on the other hand, conversely. - Showing result: consequently, therefore, thus. - Summarizing: in short, all in all, in conclusion.
- Context Links: Use sentences to bridge major shifts in subject (e.g., Winifred Gallagher linking War and Peace characters Prince Andrei and Natasha to cognitive science in Rapt).
- Word Links: Use repeated words, synonyms, or pronouns (e.g., Deborah Tannen's use of "indirectness" and pronouns referring to Greeks).
2g: Paragraph Development Strategies
- Deductive Organization: Starting with a generalization and supporting it with details (e.g., David McCullough's description of Harry S. Truman's childhood woes).
- Inductive Organization: Starting with specific details and ending with a generalization (e.g., Dawn Braithwaite’s story about a man in a wheelchair experiencing insensitivity).
Questions & Discussion
- In the segment analyzing student annotations on a text from the journal Pediatrics: - Question 1: Comparing the two annotation examples, the first is more helpful because it identifies specific rhetorical elements (audience, voice, purpose) and raises critical questions about government benefits or lack of evidence. The writer can use these as specific points of contention or investigation in an essay. - Question 2: Highlighting and minimal note-taking (like the word "Important") provides no context for why the information mattered when the writer returns to it later, leading to potential confusion or the need to re-read. - Question 3: Minimal note-taking might be useful only for very brief skimming tasks or when reading purely for factual recall under a massive time constraint where the reader already understands the context perfectly. - Question 4: Discussion based on past strategies: Useful strategies include underlining key claims and writing rebuttal evidence in margins. New strategies to try include double-entry journals for complex readings.