5

THINKING, READING, AND WRITING CRITICALLY

When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men’s minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind.

 

—Cicero¹

5.1 Introduction

Now that we have had an introduction to critical thinking, we shall see how by being a critical thinker one also becomes a critical reader or learner as well as a critical writer. Before we go into this discussion, however, let us recapitulate what constitutes critical thinking:

A critical thinker is …

1. an open-minded person who is willing to address a question with an open mind. Recall the features of a critical thinker that we mentioned in the first chapter:
   • a person guided by reason
   • a person not guided just by emotion
   • a person who considers all the evidence at hand and follows the route that it points towards
   • a person who is in search of the best possible explanation
   • a person who is free from motives and biases
   • a person who is aware of her own prejudices and is not usually influenced by them
   • a person who does not think in terms of stereotypes
   • a person who has a free and open mind
2. someone who does not accept anything without asking questions about the issue and without giving the issue a serious thought
3. someone who tries to define concepts with precision, avoiding vagueness and ambiguity
4. a person who meets the standards of critical thinking, which pertain to:
   • clarity
   • accuracy
   • precision
   • relevance
   • depth
   • breadth
5. someone who rationally evaluates all evidence
6. someone who also rationally evaluates all information
7. a person who examines and analyses all possible assumptions and biases
8. is someone who is able to look beyond the obvious
9. is someone who is able to look at things from different perspectives and can present different interpretations of the same thing
10. someone who accepts that she is fallible

Having recapitulated what makes a thinker a critical thinker, we may now go on to ask how we can become critical in reading, learning and writing.

5.2 Critical Thinking, and Critical Reading and Learning

Students, teachers and other people dealing with information or knowledge on a regular basis are always gathering information from written texts and therefore need to be skilled at such work. Critical reading is a technique of doing this in the best possible way. We must of course remember that critical reading is not the same as critical thinking. Below is the difference between the two, beautifully summed up by Dan Kurland:

Critical reading is a technique for discovering information and ideas within a text.

Critical thinking is a technique for evaluating information and ideas, for deciding what to accept and believe.²

When a critical reader approaches any text, she adopts a rational attitude towards it. In this way, she approaches it with the mind of a critical thinker. She reads with great care and active interest and analyses the facts she gathers from the text. She then reflects on what she has read. A critical thinker is concerned with evidence. So her attitude towards a subject is what facilitates the work of a critical reader.

Let us consider an example of a sentence one might come across in a newspaper and see how a critical reader should approach it. We take this example from the third chapter of this book:

The government will announce that the electricity supply is to be cut off tomorrow.

We already know that this is a syntactically ambiguous sentence. A critical thinker would try to disambiguate this sentence by deciding whether this means:

Tomorrow, the government will announce that the electricity supply is to be cut off.

Or,

The government will announce that tomorrow the electricity supply is to be cut off.

The critical reader who is not so concerned with the syntactic structure as such will be concerned with what this sentence means in the context of its occurrence.

It is not very clear what comes first—critical reading or critical thinking. It is, however, quite clear that a critical thinker is most fitted to be a critical reader and a critical reader definitely demonstrates critical thinking skills. According to Dan Kurland, critical thinking and critical reading work together in harmony:

Critical thinking allows us to monitor our understanding as we read. If we sense that assertions are ridiculous or irresponsible (critical thinking), we examine the text more closely to test our understanding (critical reading). Conversely, critical thinking depends on critical reading. You can think critically about a text (critical thinking), after all, only if you have understood it (critical reading). We may choose to accept or reject a presentation, but we must know why. We have a responsibility to ourselves, as well as to others, to isolate the real issues of agreement or disagreement. Only then can we understand and respect other people’s views. To recognize and understand those views, we must read critically.

However, we must realise that critical reading has a specific aim. When we read, we evaluate what we read. For instance, when reading a book, we try to see how well it addresses the issue at hand. Of course here we are speaking about academic books and not literary works of fiction. For the evaluation of literary work, we need neither critical thinking nor critical reading. But when we are evaluating an academic work or a text from a newspaper, we look out for the following things:

• Whether the subject matter has been properly identified and discussed
• Whether all the concepts mentioned and all the terms used in the book have been well explained and clearly defined
• Whether the claims made in the book are substantiated by evidence
• Whether the causal connections claimed in the work have been proven
• Whether any exceptions to the claims made have been addressed and explained adequately
• Whether references have been made properly
• Whether the relation between the claim and our commonsensical beliefs, if any, has been addressed
• Overall, we must evaluate the information presented in the text. This includes checking ten things:
  1. “Content
  2. Credibility
  3. Critical Thinking
  4. Copyright
  5. Citation
  6. Continuity
  7. Censorship
  8. Connectivity
  9. Comparability
  10. Context”³

I illustrate this point with the mention of a tradition in Indian classical philosophy. Each text on classical Indian philosophy starts with what is knows as the Anubandha Catustaya or the four prerequisites. The Dictionary of Indian Philosophy defines this as follows: “There are four preambulary factors of philosophical work: the subject matter (Visaya), the aim (prayojana), the relation (sambandha), and the person for whom the work is meant (adhikari).” It is customary to start every book with these four preliminaries. In order to spur the prospective reader to read through the book, the author must first state what the subject matter is. Then the author must state the aim or the goal to be achieved by the study of the subject matter at hand. Next, the aunthor must show the relation between this goal and the study of the subject matter and finally the author must mention what kind of person might be interested in reading this book or what the audience is.

I believe these points address both what is required of a critical reader as well as a critical writer. We shall discuss the notion of a critical writer shortly. For now, I would like to show how these four anuvandhas are relevant to critical reading.

When we read a book we want to know:

1. What is the subject matter of the book?
2. Why is the study of this subject necessary?
3. What aim can be achieved by the study of this subject?
4. Is this an aim that I want to achieve?

Unless the author specifies these four things in clear terms, it is not worth reading the text concerned. Even if authors do not state these four preliminaries in the way classical Indian philosophical texts did, these anuvandhas should be clear from the text itself.

What is clear from the above discussion is that a critical reader doesn’t just read. She reads in a reflective way. As we have already said, the critical reader does not only gather facts but also interprets. So the primary aim is not just the accumulation of information. The critical thinker has to, while reading, think about the subject for herself. This is the only way in which she can assimilate the new information she gathers within her own repertoire and internalise it. Therefore, while reading, teachers advise students to take notes, highlight key issues, list the evidence given to support the claims made in the text and examine the ways in which the claim has been argued in the text.

Below is a complete list of all the things that a critical reader must do:

1. Identify the main claim of the text in order to see how it is explained and defended
2. Identify the purpose of the text and examine if the text serves its purpose
3. Identify the context of the text. This involves:
   1. Identifying the academic background of the issue being discussed
   2. Identifying the audience for whom the text has been written
   3. Describing the history of the subject matter
   4. Stating the importance of all of the above points to the subject matter
4. Identify the concepts mentioned in the text. This will involve checking whether these concepts have been properly defined in the text.
5. Identify the theories employed or assumed in the text
6. Identify the methodology employed in the text
7. Identify the arguments employed in the text
8. Be sensitive to the fact that not all disciplines employ the same methodology or the same kind of argumentation
9. Evalute how well the text does the job that it takes on

One of the main aims of reading critically is to interpret the text at hand. Let us try to understand what this might involve. According to Dan Kurland, when we face a text as a critical thinker, we need to concentrate on three things:

1. What a text says: restatement
2. What a text does: description
3. What a text means: interpretation⁴

The main aim of interpretation is to recognise the purpose of the author, to understand the way in which the author tries to persuade us to believe in what he or she is claiming and also to recognise the possible biases of the author. What makes reading, or to be more precise, critically reading difficult is that none of these are obvious from what is literally presented in the text (or at least not always obvious). This makes the job of the reader difficult as it involves an active engagement with the subject matter. But we may achieve this by thinking critically about the subject matter. We need to make inferences at each step. For instance, “recognizing purpose involves inferring a basis for choices of content and language”.⁵ In order to understand the tone of the author and to understand the modes of persuasion he or she has applied, we need to examine and classify the language that he or she has chosen to use. In order to find out what the biases of the author might be, we need to classify the “nature of the patterns of choice of content and language”.⁶

This really demonstrates that the tools we apply in order to critically read a text include critical analysis and inference. And it is critical thinking that teaches us to critically analyse and infer.

5.3 Critically Thinking, Reading, and Writing

We now know what a critical thinker and what a critical reader must do. When we analyse some text as a critical thinker and as a critical reader, we look for certain specific qualities. This means, we need to demonstrate these same qualities in our writing as well. For instance, when we write, we need to be clear, accurate and precise, write what is relevant, and cover the depth and breadth of the subject matter. All this follows from the standards of critical thinking.

Following the classical Indian concept of anuvandha catustaya or the four preliminaries, we must:

1. Clearly state the subject matter
2. State the aim of our writing
3. State how a discussion of the subject matter might help to achieve this aim
4. State who the writing is meant for

This is required because a clear statement of this would make the reader inclined to read what you have written and would also help the reader understand what the purpose of your writing is. We must also do the following:

1. Clearly state the claims you want to make
2. Avoid ambiguity, vagueness, unwarranted generalisations and over-simplification of the issue
3. Provide certain background information to the reader in order to make your claim clear and show its relevance:
   • Explain the academic and historical context of the discussion of the subject
   • Describe the audience the writing is addressed to
4. Clearly and effectively argue each claim that you make
5. Show evidence for supporting your claim
6. Use examples to instantiate your claim
7. Explain all the concepts you use no matter how common those concepts may be
8. Explain the theories you employ or assume in your writing. You must also support your choice of theories.
9. Clearly explain the methodology adopted and state why this methodology is the right one for the subject matter at hand

As will be obvious from a cautious reading of what I have written, all these properties of critical writing follow from critical thinking and critical reading. What we are actually trying to do is convince the reader of what we write. There are a few questions we ought to ask in order to see for ourselves if our writing can indeed convince others:

1. “Is your position clearly stated? Is it in focus throughout the paper?
2. Does your reasoning lead to a logical conclusion?
3. Is your language understandable?
4. Are your definitions clearly explained? Are they reasonable?
5. Is your writing clear and concise?
6. Do you state and defend your assumptions?
7. Is your position well informed?
8. Are your sources identified? Are they credible?
9. Are your generalizations reasonable?
10. Are your hypotheses and predictions sound?
11. Have you covered well-known alternative views?
12. Are you being fair and open-minded?
13. Will your paper convince your reader?”⁷

Usually, there are several things that we need to follow while writing. Here, we shall mention five:

i. Convention

In order to effectively write, we need to follow certain conventions. The conventions we have in mind are mostly linguistic in nature. When writing in English, for instance, we need to follow the conventions of Standard English. For example, students are often asked to use the literary present tense and the active voice instead of the passive voice. Students are also asked to avoid sentences that reflect personal points of view, unless asked to present their own views on the matter at hand. That is, they are typically asked to adopt an objective point of view. Students are also asked to avoid platitudes like, “This view is the one I like.” When a student has to discuss a particular view, it is better to mention what follows from the view and not what impact the view has on the student’s mind, and so the objective point of view is always preferred.

Students also have to be very cautious while quoting from other works. There are certain citation conventions when doing so. They are usually asked to select any one convention and follow it throughout. Whichever citation convention you select, you need to mention the following:

In case of a book:

• The name of the book, which should be written in italics
• The name of the author
• The name of the publisher
• The year of publication
• The place of publication
• The pages that are referred

In case of an article appearing in a journal:

• The name of the article, which should be written within quotes
• The name of the author
• The name of the journal
• The volume number or the date and year
• The pages on which the article occurs
• The pages being referred to

In case of an article from an anthology:

• The name of the article, which should be written within quotes
• The name of the author
• The name of the anthology in which the article is published, which should be written in italics
• The name of the editor/s of the anthology
• The name of the publisher
• The place of publication
• The year of publication
• The pages referred to

There may be other conventions that are specific to the discipline in which the study is being conducted. For example, there are conventions regarding lower case or upper case letters while symbolically representing sentences in formal logic.

ii. Sequencing

It is very important to sequence what we write. If we consider the ways in which a good teacher teaches, we will see why sequencing is so important. Sequencing is crucial in order to impart information and that is why teachers always sequence their lessons. This is how we might sequence what we say, what we teach or what we write:

• Introduction
  • Introducing the topic
  • Introducing the sub-topics
  • Explaining the sequence in which the sub-topics follow each other
• We must state the purpose of the study along with the introduction
• We should have what may be called an advance label of the section to follow
• We should recapitulate what we have said before when we are introducing a new topic
• There should be a statement of the position that you take in the study
• There should be a conclusion drawn, which might actually be the position you take
• There must be some indication of the questions that arise from the study and some directions for further research

iii. Signposting

Signposting and sequencing go hand in hand. Signposting in writing helps a writer link what has been written previously with what is written later on. There are certain linguistic ploys that we can use to link one part of our writing with another. Often, a simple anaphora helps in doing so. For example, we may use the word “this” to link two sentences, as in these sentences: “The rise in oil prices will lead to inflation. This will lead to a lot of hardship amongst common people.” Here, the word “this” refers to inflation, which is mentioned in the first sentence. We often use sequence-indicating words like signposts. For instance, we write, “firstly ... secondly ...” or we might write “furthermore” or “as a result of”. We have studied how when we present an argument, we often use indicator words to indicate the premises, which are signposts like “since”, “because”, “for” and indicator words for the conclusions, which are signposts like “hence”, “therefore”, “consequently” or “so”.

The purpose of signposts is to give the reader some direction. Just as road signs direct travellers, signposts lead the reader in the direction the writer wants them to take. As authors, it is our duty to make our writing as clear as possible to the reader. This is why signposts, which are really like road signs, help the reader. A good writer should always pre-empt the questions that may arise in the mind of the reader while reading the text. It is to answer these questions that the writer must provide the critical reader directions pointing towards the author’s aims and how these aims might be achieved. The critical thinker would also be keen on knowing the author’s view on a particular matter for which the author should give clear indications. Signposts actually lead the reader to the answers of the queries she has while reading any text.

We have to remember that when we are presenting an argument, we should clearly state all its points and through this allow the argument to speak for itself. “A sound essay plan and a coherent structure will reveal the logic of your argument and the relationship of its parts.”⁸

Signposts can be of two kinds:⁹

• “Major signposts that signal key aspects of the work, such as purpose, author’s stance, main points, direction of the argument, conclusions
• Linking words and phrases that show connections between sentences and paragraphs.”

Some examples of signposts are, “In this Chapter, I aim to discuss …”, “The purpose of this study is …”, “This paper argues that …”, “This paper attempts at a critical evaluation of .” etc.

We have previously mentioned some examples of linking words and phrases, and here are the different kinds of linking words or phrases:

• “Listing:

  First(ly), second(ly), finally

• Indicating addition or similarity:

  Also, besides, in addition, furthermore, as well, similarly

• Indicating contrast:

  However, nevertheless, on the other hand

• Giving a reason:

  For this reason, because, because of, due to

• Indicating result:

  Therefore, thus, as a result, consequently, yet

• Reformulating an idea:

  In other words, to put it simply, that is

• Exemplifying:

  For example, for instance, to exemplify”¹⁰

iv. Structuring

As is already clear, writing should always have a clear structure. Structured writing is the result of a writing plan, that is, a clear and well-knit logical sequence of all parts that constitute the text. How we sequence our sections or how the logic runs will vary from case to case and will depend on many factors such as:

• “Logical progression
• Increasing significance
• Equal significance
• Chronological order
• Narrative sequence
• Category groupings”¹¹

v. A sense of the audience

As we have discussed, the critical writer must always be aware of the audience that she is addressing through her writing. This is why a writer must develop a sense of audience. This is an issue that has been frequently discussed in great depth in a large amount of literature and we will therefore not delve into it in detail. However, we will simply say that in developing a sense of audience, we need to be aware of the context of the discussion and also have some idea of the background knowledge that the readers might be expected to have. A critical writer should keep these two things in mind to produce writing that is effective for her readers.

5.4 Concluding Remarks

We have now come to the end of this book. In this book, we have discussed quite a few topics, though briefly. In the first chapter, we discussed who a critical thinker is and what can make a critical thinker a good one. We have also discussed the standards of critical thinking as well as its benefits and barriers. In the second chapter, we discussed what an argument is and how we can recognise an argument. Here, we discussed premises, hidden premises, conclusions and intermediate conclusions, truth content and logical content, validity, deductive arguments, inductive arguments and strength. Then, in the third chapter, we discussed inferences and fallacies, how certain linguistic phenomena contribute to fallacious arguments, fallacies and specifically relevance. In chapter four, we discussed information and its evaluation as well as the various sources of information. We discussed the basic human limitations with regard to reason and its social influences. Finally, in this chapter, we discussed how critical thinking enhances critical reading and how critical thinking and critical reading promotes critical writing.

Critical thinking is not only for the chosen few, not only for the academically inclined, not only for those who receive a formal higher education but is for any reasonable human being, any rational agent and any responsible citizen of a country. I am certain that while reading this book, many of my readers may have felt like they are already aware of a lot of what we have said about critical thinking. Perhaps many also felt they do not need this training in critical thinking because they already are critical thinkers. Just as we need to study grammar though we are perfectly fluent and correct in our native language, we need to study ways of critical reasoning just in order to re-instil an almost natural ability that human beings are blessed with—the ability to think critically.

5.5 More Exercises

Answer the following questions:

1. Who is a critical reader?
2. What are the four preliminaries? Why are they relevant for critical reading and critical writing?
3. What are the things that we need to check when we evaluate a written work as a reader?
4. What are the nine things that a critical reader has to do?
5. What are the conventions of critical writing?
6. How do we sequence our writing?
7. What are signposts?
8. How do we structure our writing?
9. What do we mean by sense of audience?