MOST EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES TO DEVELOP YOUR CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS

Critical thinking skills are important if you want not only to learn facts but also to apply your knowledge for your work and life situations. While most of educational programs teach students to remember information only, critical thinking allows you to go beyond educational minimum, making your own conclusions and decisions out of learned data.

ROLE OF CRITICAL THINKING FOR SUCCESSFUL STUDY AND CAREER

Solid knowledge is very important for future specialists, but it’s more useful if you know how to use it in practice and how to make effective decisions according to information you know. Critical thinking allows developing your knowledge, building your own conclusions and applying it for new situations and tasks.
While most of people use facts they have already learned and behaving as they were taught, critical thinkers are able to create and invent new solutions. Thinking critically is a right path towards new discoveries, numerous improvements in chosen field, smarter way of work and living. Famous scientists and inventors are beautiful examples of how critical thinking can be beneficial for humanity.
Developing your critical thinking skills, you also stop being an easy target for someone’s influence. For example, most of marketing strategies make a product more attractive that it really is. However, applying your critical thinking skills, you can easily understand real value of any promoted item.

Writing great paper works is another way to develop your critical thinking. These skills are clearly demonstrated while writing conclusion for your essay. Critical thinker will easily mention that facts that are related and logically connected to gathered information but are new for reader, while ordinary person will just mention some facts written above only.

1CustomPapers service often provides professional help for those who struggle with writing their academic papers and gives a useful example of how critical thinking can be applied for your excellent writing work.

WAYS TO IMPROVE SKILLS OF CRITICAL THINKING

Critical thinking is rarely a natural skill that a person born with. Most often, it is a result of thinking training. It means that critical thinking can be improved with practice. Nowadays, there are hundreds of theories and exercises for making your critical thinking skills better. We have gathered some of those that are effective and easy to start with.

Asking plain questions often

Development of critical thinking starts from ability to analyze information, which you have previously learned. Some questions may appear strange for you in the beginning, but soon you will understand how many benefits appear when you learn to think differently:

• Which data I already know about the subject and where the information came from (source)?
• What I want to achieve and how this information can be useful for me?
• Is the information I have correct? Is there any fact or statement that makes me hesitate or looks like it needs to be checked again?
• Could I miss something important about the subject that I am thinking about?
• Is my opinion objective? Is it based on my personal feelings or attitude only?
• Are there people who have different opinion about this? Why?
• How my current work or information I learn may be useful for me in future? Where can I apply it?
• Which issues of the subject I need to review when I get more information?

Questions may differ according to situation and subject. Using your logic, try to find right questions that will help you to make desired conclusion.

Seeing the Same Subject From Different Positions

Perhaps, you’ve already read essays or articles where author tried to demonstrate main idea from different points of view. According to time, position, level of knowledge and other factors, people may see the same thing differently. We have a great number of different theories in each science due to diversity of scientists’ views. Sometimes, two theories may base on the same facts and still be different.

In most cases, we do or think something according to our previous experience or habits. Critical thinking and proper education allows us to evaluate our behavior and thoughts and to find better, smarter or more ethical decision.

Try to think more about reasons of people’s choices, preferences or behavior. Understanding different points of view, you will learn to pick most valuable information and to find smart solutions.

Read more books

Reading makes us smarter, develops our logic, analytic skills and critical thinking. A good story can be a real joy but it is also a wonderful way of translating authors’ ideas to our mentality. Books help us to see somebody’s position and idea more clearly.

Not only educational literature makes you smarter. Novels and fictional stories give you a lot of questions to think about and it makes your brain work and search for critical solutions.

Good books are not only those that give you information but also those that make you think and search over issues they content. Reading is necessary for developing logic, critical thinking, imagination and creativity. That is why; reading is necessary for modern education.

Start reading more often, find good classic novels in internet, street bookstores or visit library.

The more literature you read the better your critical thinking skills become. However, writing can also be a very important issue to practice your critical thinking and a chance to apply it.