Critical Thinking In Essay Writing

Question: Craig (1994) states, “To be critical in your thinking or arguing means that you question the phenomenon of study rather than simply accept and repeat the facts” To what extent is this questioning expected of university students in essay writing.   Draw on relevant unit materials and your experience in SSK12

Critical Thinking in Essay Writing

Craig (1994) states, ‘To be critical in your thinking or arguing means that you question the phenomenon of study rather than simply accept and repeat the facts’.   In this essay, I will be evaluating the extent to which this questioning is expected of students in essay writing.   In order to achieve this, I will explore what it means to be critical in one’s thinking and arguing and analyse why critical thinking is so important to a students understanding of what they study, rather than simply rote learning.   From a critically thinking perspective, I will then consider what is expected of university students and what aspects of critical thinking are required within the scope of essay writing.   In order to achieve this, I will be drawing on relevant materials and my experience of the ‘Introduction to University Learning’ unit.

In the context of university learning, critical thinking is used to describe skills and thought processes conducive to effective study and learning.   Craig (1994) states, ‘in formal university study…we use critical [thinking] in a positive sense to describe a person’s balanced assessment (or judgement) of something.   A critical thinker gets to the root, bottom or real cause of something.’   In other words, effective critical thinkers have keen insight, good judgement and the ability to look at a subject in detail to determine its quality and significance in order to form a balanced opinion or assessment and make a value judgment.   Marshall and Rowland (2006 p. 42) adjoins this concept by saying that critical thinking is designed to encourage a student to identify and question their own world...