Critical Reading and Writing

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Critical Reading and Writing

• CSCI102 - Systems
• ITCS905 - Systems
• MCS9102 - Systems

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Definitions

• Analysis
• The investigation of any production of the
  intellect, as a poem, tale, argument,
  philosophical system, so as to exhibit its
  component elements in simple form
• Critical
• Characterized by careful evaluation and judgment
• Critical Analysis
• An appraisal based on careful analytical
  evaluation

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Critical Analysis

• The ultimate end of analysis is a deeper
  understanding and a fuller appreciation of the
  literature
• The purpose for writing a critique is to evaluate
  somebody's work (a book, an essay, a movie, a
  painting...) in order to increase your
  understanding of it
• Writing a critical paper requires two steps
• Critical reading
• Critical writing

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Critical reading

• To read critically is to make judgements about
  how a text is argued
• This is a highly reflective skill requiring you
  to "stand back" and gain some distance from the
  text you are reading

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Critical reading A Process

• Identify the author's thesis and purpose
• Analyse the structure of the passage by
  identifying all main ideas
• Consult a dictionary or encyclopaedia to
  understand material that is unfamiliar to you
• Make an outline of the work or write a
  description of it

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Critical reading A Process

• Write a summary of the work
• Determine the purpose, which could be
• To inform with factual material
• To persuade with appeal to reason or emotions
• To entertain (to affect people's emotions)

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Critical reading A Process

• Evaluate the means by which the author has
  accomplished his purpose
• If the purpose is to inform, has the material
  been presented clearly, accurately, with order
  and coherence?
• If the purpose is to persuade, look for evidence,
  logical reasoning, contrary evidence
• If the purpose was to entertain, determine how
  emotions are affected does it make you laugh,
  cry, angry? Why did it affect you?

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Critical reading A Process

• Consider the following questions
• How is the material organized?
• Who is the intended audience?
• What are the writer's assumptions about the
  audience?
• What kind of language and imagery does the author
  use?

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How Do I Read Looking for Ways of Thinking?

• First determine the central claims or purpose of
  the text (its thesis)
• A critical reading attempts to assess how these
  central claims are developed or argued
• Critical reading occurs after some preliminary
  processes of reading
• Begin by skimming research materials, especially
  introductions and conclusions, in order to
  strategically choose where to focus your critical
  efforts

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How Do I Read Looking for Ways of Thinking?

• Begin to make some judgements about context
• What audience is the text written for?
• Who is it in dialogue with? (This will probably
  be other scholars or authors with differing
  viewpoints.)
• In what historical context is it written?
• All these matters of context can contribute to
  your assessment of what is going on in a text

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How Do I Read Looking for Ways of Thinking?

• Distinguish the kinds of reasoning the text
  employs
• What concepts are defined and used?
• Does the text appeal to a theory or theories?
• Is any specific methodology laid out?
• If there is an appeal to a particular concept,
  theory, or method, how is that concept, theory,
  or method then used to organize and interpret the
  data?
• You might also examine how the text is organized
  
• how has the author analysed (broken down) the
  material?
• Be aware that different disciplines (i.e.
  history, sociology, philosophy, biology) will
  have different ways of arguing

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How Do I Read Looking for Ways of Thinking?

• Examine the evidence the text employs
• Supporting evidence is indispensable to an
  argument
• You are now in a position to grasp how the
  evidence is used to develop the argument and its
  controlling claims and concepts
• The prior steps allow you to see evidence in its
  context
• Consider the kinds of evidence that are used
• What counts as evidence in this argument?
• Is the evidence statistical? literary?
  historical? etc
• From what sources is the evidence taken?
• Are these sources primary or secondary?

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How Do I Read Looking for Ways of Thinking?

• Critical reading may involve evaluation
• Your reading of a text is already critical if it
  accounts for and makes a series of judgments
  about how a text is argued
• However, some essays may also require you to
  assess the strengths and weaknesses of an
  argument
• If the argument is strong, why?
• Could it be better or differently supported?
• Are there gaps, leaps, or inconsistencies in the
  argument?
• Is the method of analysis problematic?
• Could the evidence be interpreted differently?
• Are the conclusions warranted by the evidence
  presented?
• What are the unargued assumptions?
• Are they problematic?
• What might an opposing argument be?

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How Do I Read Looking for Ways of Thinking?

• When highlighting a text or taking notes from it,
  teach yourself to highlight argument
• Look for those places in a text where an author
  explains
• Analytical moves
• concepts used
• how they are used
• How conclusions are arrived at

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How Do I Read Looking for Ways of Thinking?

• Don't let yourself foreground and isolate facts
  and examples
• No matter how interesting they may be
• First, look for the large patterns that give
  purpose, order, and meaning to those examples
• The opening sentences of paragraphs can be
  important to this task

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Critical Summaries

• A summary is essentially a tool to help you in
  the task of careful and critical reading
• Once acquired, the habit of critical analysis
  will serve you in everything you read
• You should make it a practice to continue writing
  such summaries for your own benefit even when you
  are not required to turn them in

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Critical Summaries

• What follows are some tips on how to go about it
• Your summary should do two things
• Analyse the argument and exhibit its structure
• Give a critical assessment of it

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Analyse the argument

• To exhibit the structure of an argument, you will
  distinguish
• Premises (the propositions that the argument
  requires you accept at the outset)
• Conclusions (the thesis that the author is trying
  to get you to agree with)

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Analyse the argument

• Sometimes (not always), the conclusion will be
  meant to follow deductively
• Other times the argument will not be so tight

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Analyse the argument

• It will often be useful to ferret out unargued
  assumptions
• including especially unexpressed ones, which are
  needed for the argument to go through
• Note that the premises don't necessarily come
  first
• Often a writer, for reasons of convenience or
  style, will say not "A, therefore B," but "B,
  because A."

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Analyse the argument

• Pick out all and only the main points
• Use a Top-Down approach
• First ask yourself what, in a sentence or two, is
  the point of the whole passage or article
• In your summary, you can start with that brief
  statement
• Then go on to each principal part of the
  argument, and repeat the process until you have
  got down to a level of detail adequate for the
  space available in your summary

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Analyse the argument

• If the passage is very long, there will obviously
  have to be less detail
• Mastery of a text requires the ability to
  summarize it to any desired length
• When something remains unclear, don't gloss it
  over, but draw attention to it

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Analyse the argument

• Pick out any "crux" or difficulty of
  interpretation
• Don't be afraid of admitting that you don't
  understand something, but try to say as clearly
  as possible what you find had to understand, and
  why
• Sharpen any difficulty found by offering
  alternative interpretations

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Critical Assessment

• Make very clear when you are no longer stating
  what your author says, but have come to your own
  critical assessment
• Indicate briefly whether and why you think the
  premises and assumptions you have been asked to
  accept are
• True or false
• Plausible or implausible
• If the argument is deductive, indicate whether it
  is valid
• If it is not deductive say whether your find it
  acceptable, and if not, why

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Critical Assessment

• One way is to look for more or less remote
  consequences of the thesis that may turn out to
  be unacceptable
• It is always a useful exercise to try as hard as
  you can to find good reasons to disagree with
  what a writer says, especially if you agree
• Conversely, if you disagree with the conclusion,
  try hard to make up an independent defense of it

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Critical Assessment

• If the argument is bad, explain how
• Are one or more of the premises false? (This
  makes the argument unsound)
• Does the conclusion follow? (This makes the
  argument invalid)
• Does the argument rely on assumptions that are
  unacceptable, or arbitrary, or debatable?

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Critical Assessment

• Does the argument contain crucial ambiguities?
• (An ambiguous word or phrase is one that has more
  than one possible meaning. This can foul up an
  argument!)
• Is rhetoric substituted for argument at some
  crucial stage?

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Critical Assessment

• In addition, point out anything about the logic
  of the substance of the argument that seems to
  especially interesting
• It can be interesting because you strongly agree
  or because you strongly disagree
• In either case, you should try briefly to justify
  your view

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Your Assignment

• Read, summarise and provide a critical comment on
  the provided reading. The summary and critical
  comments are to be provided in sentence and
  paragraph format (no dot points) using your own
  words.

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Your Assignment

• The article is available electronically at
• http//www.seanational.com.au/downloads/publicatio
  ns/Hourigan36-37.pdf
• The assignment must be between 250-300 words in
  length
• The assignment is to be submitted electronically
  through WebCT
• Due date for submission of assignment is August 6
  2004 500pm.

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Your Assignment

• Criteria for assessment of task 1 and suggested
  weighting for each criteria
• Summary of article clearly identifies ( 1.5 )
• Authors main argument/ main ideas
• Some of the authors supporting details, evidence
  for main ideas
• Critical comment (0.5)
• Student provides critical comment on the reading
• Grammatical accuracy (1.5)
• Summary and critical comment are written in
  paragraph form
• Grammatically accurate sentence structure is used
  in the task
• Free from plagiarism (1.5)
• Ideas in the summary are expressed in the
  students own words