CRITICAL READING AS A FORM OF REASONING

 AS A READER, IT IS IMPORTANT TO BE CRITICAL because it allows you to read and analyze a text critically,
breaking it down into its component parts and assessing its strengths and weaknesses. It also helps you
understand the author’s purpose in writing the text and how it relates to your own life.

Possible meaning of “critical”

• Someone or something is to disapprove it or to have a negative response to that person or thing.

• Ex. Some people are critical of the government’s distribution of vaccine.

• critical is something very important.

Ex. The information drive about the different kinds of vaccines is critical to the people.

• critical is something very serious.

Ex. The flooding situation in some areas of Tantangan has reached a critical point.

• Critical condition (things are not looking good.

Ex. My grandfather is in a critical condition right now.

COMBINING CRITICAL AND READING

 Critical reading advances the understanding of the reader by not taking the text by its face value. It studies
the composition’s every nook and cranny (OR EVERY PART) until you find the author’s inconsistencies,
oversights, limitations and other reasonable arguments that ARE often overlooked by a normal reader.
 Daniel Willingham (2007)
o Three types of thinking: reasoning, making judgments and problem solving.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PLAIN READING AND CRITICAL READING

 • Critical reading does not simply ask what the text says but more of how the topic is presented and why.
Critical readers dwell on the distinctive qualities of the text.

• Readers normally read texts to obtain facts and knowledge. A critical reader, on the other hand, mulls over
(THINKS OVER) the unique perspective of the author on a particular text and how the facts the author
presented arrived at his/her conclusion.

READING TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE INFORMATION

• ANALYZE

• EVALUATE

• INTERPRET

According to the website criticalreading.com, there are three steps of analysis reflecting the three types of reading
and discussion:

• 1. What a text says – restatement (wherein the reader merely restates what is said in the original text)

• 2. What a text does – description (wherein the reader discusses aspects of the discussion itself)

• 3. What a text means – interpretation (wherein the reader analyzes the meaning of the text as a whole).

7 CRITICAL READING STRATEGIES

• 1. PREVIEWING

• 2. CONTEXTUALIZING

• 3. QUESTIONING TO UNDERSTAND AND REMEMBER

• 4. REFLECTING ON CHALLENGES TO YOUR BELIEFS AND VALUES.

• 5. OUTLINING AND SUMMARIZING

• 6. EVALUATING AN ARGUMENT

• 7. COMPARING AND CONTRASTING

REMEMBER THIS:

 CRITICAL READING IS NOT MEANT TO CRITICIZE BUT TO ASSESS THE VALIDITY OF THE TEXTUAL EVIDENCE.