Understanding Critical Reading

Critical Reading

• Critical reading involves looking for ways of thinking within a text.
• Texts can be easily comprehended or not easily comprehended.
• Meaning of words may be implied through the text, reader's context, or author's context.

Simple vs. Critical Reading

• Simple reading involves identifying and recognizing the meaning of a text.
• Critical reading is a more advanced form and a higher level of reading.
• It is a type of reading where the reader analyzes and interprets the material to see if it presents logical ideas and connections.

Critical Reading as an Extension of Critical Thinking

• Critical reading involves engaging yourself in a text or any material.
• Critical reading does not necessarily mean being "critical" or disapproving of what is read.
• Critical thinking is the ability to think clearly and rationally, understanding the relation of ideas.
• A critical reader should question assumptions and analyze if what is read is truthful.

Characteristics of a Critical Thinker

• Understands the relation of one idea to another
• Determines the importance and relevance of ideas and arguments
• Recognizes, builds, and appraises ideas and arguments
• Identifies inconsistencies and errors in reasoning
• Approaches problems in a consistent and systematic way
• Reflects on the justification of own assumptions, beliefs, and values

Critical Reading Strategies

• Annotating: Underlining or highlighting important ideas or points in a text such as thesis statement, topic sentence, supporting details, body, and conclusion.
• Contextual Reading: Studying the author, the time period, and important events when the text was written.
• Outlining: Creating an overview of a document with information and ideas arranged hierarchically.
• Summarizing: Condensing or writing material in the reader's own words, making it shorter than the original while retaining important ideas.
• Paraphrasing: Writing a text in one's own words while maintaining the original information.
• Comparing: Naming the similarities of two or more ideas or pieces of information.
• Contrasting: Naming the differences.
• Evaluating an Argument: Assessing whether a claim or argument is true and supported by evidence.
• Reflecting on Challenges to Beliefs and Values: Considering reading materials that affect emotions as well as challenge or confuse you.
• Looking for Patterns of Opposition: Searching for opposing issues or hints that writers may present to analyze the text critically.

More Critical Reading Strategies

• Judging the Writer's Credibility: Asking questions to check if the writer is credible enough.
• Exploring Figurative Language: Recognizing that figurative language uses words or expressions with a meaning different from literal interpretation.
• Recognizing Emotional Manipulation: Identifying when writers use manipulative tactics to make readers agree or believe what they are saying by resorting to false or exaggerated statements or appeals.

SQ3R Method

• A method introduced by Francis Pleasant Robinson.
• Survey: Browse the book to identify headings and other features.
• Question: Formulate questions about the text.
• Read: Begin reading the material.
• Recite: Answer the questions formulated in the "Question" step.
• Review: Test yourself by recalling the information learned.

Explicit and Implicit Information

• Critical readers use textual evidence to analyze what the writer has explicitly or implicitly stated.
• Explicit: Fully revealed or expressed, leaving no room for confusion.
• Implicit: Not openly stated, suggested or implied.
• Inference: A conclusion or opinion formed based on both explicit and implicit information, or evidence and reasoning.

Implicit vs. Explicit Comparison

• Implicit is implied or hinted at, not directly stated, explicit is clearly and directly stated.
• Implicit often requires interpretation and inference, explicit is clearly and directly understood.
• Implicit often relies on context and prior knowledge, explicit is less reliant on context.
• Reading between the lines in a poem is implicit vs. a straight forward instruction manual is explicit.
• Can be less clear but allows for depth is implicit, offers clarity and precision is explicit.

Claims In Text

• Claim: The writer's point or position regarding a specific topic, which serves as the central argument.
• Claims Characteristics: Argumentative and debatable, evokes objections, specific, focused, and engaging, leading readers to consider the writer's perspective, logical, and supported reasonably.
• Fact: A true piece of information that truly exists or happens.
• Opinion: A belief, viewpoint, or way of thinking about something.

Three Types of Claims: Claim of Fact

• Claim of Fact- a statement that reports, describes, predicts, and makes causal claims.
• It asserts that something has existed, exists, or will exist based on data.
• Relies on reliable sources or systematic procedure to be validated.
• It is Arguable/ debatable, can be objectively proven, based on reasonable inference, and can be justified and validated.

Claim Of Fact Examples

• The death penalty does not deter crime:
  • It reports
  • It can be refuted and justified
  • It can be proven
• Violence on television influences children to behave violently:
  • It makes a causal claim
  • It can be validated
  • It can be proven

Three Types of Claims: Claim of Policy

• Claim of Policy- a specific statement on procedures or laws that need to be modified based on certain issues or conditions, offering specific actions or solutions a particular problem.
• It proposes for an action to be taken or discontinued, defends actionable plans, usually answers “how” questions, and contains auxiliaries such as “should, ought to, must”.

Claim Of Policy Examples

• National ID system must be implemented in the Philippines for better general transactions:
  • Suggests a specific action to be done.
  • It Recommends an action to solve a problem.
  • Contains “should” auxiliary verb
• Anti-terror Law must be amended:
  • A statement of law that needs to be modified.
  • Proposes a specific action to be discontinued.
  • Contains auxiliary verb- ‘must’
• COVID-19 can be transmitted through air(fact) then wearing a mask outside should be required to the public.(policy)

Claim of Policy Guidelines

• State your proposal clearly.
• Support your claim with enough evidence.
• Prove that the current conditions are less desirable and that they should be changed.
• Show the suggested law or policy is the best one that they need to be adopted.

Three Types of Claims: Claim of Value

• Claims of value are arguable.
• Discussions normally happen when one attempts to prove that something is more or less desirable than the other.
• Aesthetic and moral arguments are value claims.
• Example- There is as single mother who chose for a their child that had adoptive parents who could care for what the child needed.
• Claims of value are almost subjective, thus, have to prepare persuasive explanations and arguments to defend and prove a stand for issues.