Critical Thinking
A definition of critical thinking and a few examples of how students use it in everyday
situations
"The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of
thinking, and we thus drift toward unparalled catastrophes."--Albert Einstein
Critical thinking is a process that progresses from becoming fully aware of something to
reflecting on it, to reacting to it. You use this sequence often in your life, even if you
have never called the process “critical thinking.”
EXAMPLES
You engage in it when you meet someone new and decide whether you like the person;
when you read a book or see a movie and form an opinion of it; when you learn a new job
and then evaluate the job itself, as well as your ability to do the work, and when you are
trying to make sense out of a literary work.
STEPS IN THE CRITICAL THINKING PROCESS
1. Analyze: Consider the whole and then break it into its component parts so that
you can examine them separately. By seeing them as distinct units, you can
understand how they are connected.
2. Summarize: Extract and restate in one sentence the material’s main message or
central point at the literal level. Each story in your text has a summary after the
title.
3. Interpret: Read “between the lines” to make inferences about the unstated
assumptions implied by the material. Also, evaluate the material for its
underlying currents as conveyed by tone, slant, and clarity of distinctions between
fact and opinion; by the quality of evidence; and by the rigor of its reasoning and
logic.
4. Synthesize: Pull together what you have summarized, analyzed, and interpreted
to connect it to what you already know (prior knowledge) or what you are
currently learning. Find links that help you grasp the new material to create a new
whole, one that reflects your ability to see and explain relationships among ideas.
5. Assess critically: Judge the quality of the material on its own and as it holds up
in your synthesis of it with related material.
OVERALL COMMENTS
6. As with the writing process, steps in the thinking process are not rigidly in place.
Each element is described separately to help you understand its operation, but in
reality, the elements are intertwined. Expect, therefore, to sometimes combine
steps, reverse their order, and return to parts of the process needed anew.
Synthesis and assessment, in particular, tend to operate concurrently. Still, be
aware they are two different mental activities; synthesis is making connections,
and assessment is making judgments.