{"id":230,"date":"2014-07-25T20:09:54","date_gmt":"2014-07-25T20:09:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.candelalearning.com\/writershandbook\/?post_type=chapter&p=230"},"modified":"2017-01-04T22:29:02","modified_gmt":"2017-01-04T22:29:02","slug":"2-2-understanding-how-critical-thinking-works","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-mcc-styleguide\/chapter\/2-2-understanding-how-critical-thinking-works\/","title":{"raw":"2.2 Understanding How Critical Thinking Works","rendered":"2.2 Understanding How Critical Thinking Works"},"content":{"raw":" \r\n
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2.2<\/span> Understanding How Critical Thinking Works<\/h2>\r\n
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Learning Objectives<\/h3>\r\n
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  1. Learn how and why critical thinking works.<\/li>\r\n \t
  2. Understand the creative and constructive elements of critical thinking.<\/li>\r\n \t
  3. Add to the list of productive questions that can be asked about texts.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\u201cCritical thinking\u201d has been a common phrase in education for more than a quarter century, but it can be a slippery concept to define. Perhaps because \u201ccritical\u201d is an adjective with certain negative connotations (e.g., \u201cYou don\u2019t have to be so critical\u201d or \u201cEverybody\u2019s a critic\u201d), people sometimes think that critical thinking is a fault-finding exercise or that there is nothing creative about it. But defined fairly and fully, critical thinking<\/span><\/span> is in fact a precondition to creativity.\r\n\r\nCritical thinkers consider multiple sides of an issue before choosing sides. They tend to ask questions instead of accepting everything they hear or read, and they know that answers often only open up more lines of inquiry. Critical thinkers read between the lines instead of reading only at face value, and they also develop a keen sense of how their own minds operate. Critical thinkers recognize that much of the information they read and hear is a combination of fact and opinion. To be successful in college, you will have to learn to differentiate between fact and opinion through logic, questioning, and verification.\r\n\r\nFacts are pieces of information that you can verify as true. Opinions are personal views or beliefs that may have very little grounding in fact. Since opinions are often put forth as if they were facts, they can be challenging to recognize as opinions. That\u2019s where critical thinkers tend to keep questioning. It is not enough to question only the obviously opinionated material in a text. Critical thinkers develop a habit of subjecting all textual statements to a whole constellation of questions about the speaker<\/strong> (or writer), the intended audience<\/span><\/span>, the statement<\/strong> itself, and the relevance<\/strong> of it.\r\n\r\nConsidering the speaker:\r\n