Becoming a Critical Thinker

Book excerpt: Practical, approachable, and thought-provoking: your complete companion to critical thinking.Becoming a critical thinker is a straight-forward, reassuring, and complete guide to critical thinking - one that helps you to understand critical thinking and develop the skills needed to employ it. This book supports the reader to not only think critically, but to do so independently, as a student, professional, and global citizen. The book has a clear three-part structure: firstly, examining what critical thinking is; secondly, exploring the three overarching aims of critical thinking; and finally, focussing on how to develop the essential tools to support those aims. This text assumes no prior knowledge or understanding: it has been developed to gently guide the reader from school-level education to university-level thinking in a clear and engaging manner. This is the only critical thinking skills text to offer insights and advice from professionals and students, helping the reader learn from the experiences of others in a range of contexts. Each chapter also offers guided exercises, checklists, and further reading to encourage the reader to apply techniques learnt to real situations. It is also the only text to offer chapters dedicated to listening and speaking, which are often overlooked, but are vitally important skills.