Academic Skills
Dr. Zina Muneam Mudheher
Lecture 1
Introduction to Thinking skills and Communication:
1- How should we think and debate?
❑ Thinking process differs from person to another according to intellectual
activities.
❑ Thinking is a human ability that can be developed through training.
2- Approaches to learning and teaching:
Two types of learning in daily life are:
❑ Teacher-centred Instruction: this is a one-way learning process, from the
teacher to the student
❑ Student-centred Instruction: this is a two-way learning process, from the
teacher to the student and vice versa.
3- Thinking Skills:
❖ Lower-order Thinking Skills:
➢ Remembering
➢ Understanding
➢ Applying
❖ Higher-order Thinking Skills:
➢ Analysing
➢ Evaluating
➢ Creating
➢ Critical Thinking
➢ 4- Critical Thinking
➢ Definition:
➢ It is the ability to understand, evaluate and reach a conclusion about issues
in accordance with certain criteria by means of observing, raising questions,
comparing, checking arguments and logical reasoning.
➢ The purpose behind critical thinking is reflecting on an opinion in order to
analyze it and providing evidence and argumentation subjectively, then
reaching a decision resorting to certain criteria.
➢ There will an exchange of opinions about an issue, a news article, or a story.
➢ To accustom students to critical thinking, the best way is to differentiate
fact from opinion as well as relevant information from irrelevant
information.
➢ 5- Fact and Opinion:
➢ Fact: fact refers to something which can be proven. It expresses a truth
that is reached by consensus which can be found out through observation
possessing undisputable of details.
➢ For example: 9 is a bigger numeral than 8, or words can be nouns or verbs.
Fact:
• Something proven to be true.
Opinion: it is the expression of a person’s viewpoints or it is expression of one’s
understanding, ideology or feelings. An opinion can be agreed or disagreed to.
For example There are more job opportunities for Civil Department graduates
than Architecture Department graduates
Opinion:
• A feeling or belief.
6- Debating and Argumentation:
Debate: is a formal discussion about a certain topic reaching a common ground
between two opposing sides.
Argumentation: it is the process of reasoning the evidence in order to support
your opinion. It is summarizing your conclusions in order to convince the opposing
side.
Debate:
• To argue both sides of a topic
Components of Argumentation:
Students should learn that argumentation consists of the following three
components:
❖ . Statement of possible truth:
Students should be trained to start with conclusion they have reached. For
example:
Smoking cigarettes is less harmful than smoking hookah.
❖ . Supporting your statements:
It is important that students should be trained so that when they demonstrate
their views, they can support their statements with scientific evidence (referring
to researches, surveys or collected data) rather than opinion. For example:
According to Word Health Organization, smoking a hookah equals 100 cigarettes.
❖ . Explain why the audience should care about the statement:
Through demonstrating the importance of your viewpoint, you tell the audience
why they should care about your topic.
Debate & House Metaphor
Forming a debate is like building a house
7- Steps of Critical Thinking
1. Collecting data relevant to your topic.
2. Demonstrating differing viewpoints.
3. Discussing and checking the viewpoints to make sure they are valid.
4. Separating effective and weak aspects of the viewpoints.
5. Evaluating the viewpoints subjectively.
[Link] arguments on the validity of the viewpoints.
8- Characteristics of Critical Thinking:
A person possessing critical thinking ability has a number of characteristics:
• A person with this ability does not offer opinion on every topic; they do not talk
about an issue which they do not have sufficient information.
• They know when they need more information about a specific topic.
• They know conclusions can be correct or erroneous.
• They know that people have different understanding of a certain issue.
• They raise questions and investigate when issues are vague.
• They can tell the difference between emotional and logical thinking.
• They resort to reliable sources and refer to them.
• They care about every aspect of the topic equally.
• They do not deviate from the main idea of the topic.
• When there is a necessary argument they will have a response.