Critical Thinking.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

CRCB CHAPTER 14. EVALUATING INTERNET RESOURCES

SUMMARY CHAPTER 14 EVALUATING INTERNET RESOURCES

Evaluating Internet Sources of information helps you determine if they are reliable and useful. Knowing how to critically evaluate Internet material not only helps you become a better student, but will help you in your work life beyond college. Use the Internet source evaluation system described in this chapter as a tool for assessing websites. As a reader and thinker, become an “open minded skeptic” by considering each website’s Relevancy, Reliability, Credibility and Accuracy using the following seven steps: 1.Know your purpose. 2. Double-check facts and resources. 3. Consider the source. 4. Evaluate content. 5. Determine intended audience. 6. Evaluate the writing. 7. Use what you already know.

CRCB CHAPTER 13. READING BEYOND THE WORDS

SUMMARY CHAPTER 13 READING BEYOND THE WORDS

Critical reading comprehension involves challenging yourself to understand what you read in your textbooks at different levels of complexity. Bloom’s taxonomy lists six levels of critical thinking-knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation-that you can use to deepen your understanding of textbook material. By creating and answering questions at each of these levels, you will be better able to predict the kinds of questions your instructor will ask on an exam and better prepare to answer them.

CRCB CHAPTER 12 IDETIFYING AND EVALUATING ARGUMENTS

SUMMARY CHAPTER 12 IDENTIFYING AND EVALUATING ARGUMENTS

Recognizing arguments as you read lets you critically examine an author’s line of reasoning. Arguments have the structure of at least one reason and one conclusion. One way to detect them is to look for an author’s conclusions and then track the reasons he or she used to reach them. Another way is to look for the argument word clues an author uses to indicate when reasons are being presented and conclusions stated. Arguments can be evaluated using specific criteria including determining dependability, distinguishing fact from opinion, and detecting fallacies. The two primary types of arguments are deductive and inductive. Deductive arguments have at least one premise that logically leads to a conclusion. If the premise or premises of a deductive argument are true, then the conclusion is true. Inductive arguments begin with a series of specific observations and conclude with a generalization that logically flows from them. As they are based on limited observations, even well-constructed inductive arguments cannot be considered absolutely true.

CRCB CHAPTER 11. READING, UNDERSTANDING, AND CREATING VISUAL AIDS

SUMMARY CHAPTER 11 READING, UNDERSTANDING, AND CREATING VISUAL AIDS

An effective reading and study strategy is to make your own visual aids. To create an effective visual aid, you have to recognize the important elements in what you are reading and be able to prioritize and organize them in a logical and useful format. It will quickly become obvious how well you know the material; you can’t draw a diagram or devise a table if you don’t understand what you have read or heard.

Saturday, May 3, 2008

CRCB CHAPTER 10 TEXRBOOK MARKING

CHAPTER 10 SUMMARY TEXTBOOK MARKING

Always mark information that is unclear, to remind yourself to find out what it means before you are tested on the material.
A personalized system will work well as long as it is consistent, makes sense to you, and achieves the main goal of textbook marking: showing the relationships between ideas in what you read.