Page 163 - Smart Thinking: Skills for Critical Understanding and Writing, 2nd Ed

Answers, Discussion,

and Further Advice

Chapter 1
Exercise 1.1

Asking questions (of ourselves and others). Your questions are designed to tell you
what you do not already know and guide you in what to find out; but they also draw
out hidden aspects of a problem; and, because questions are like claims (see chapter 2),
they provide possible conclusions for your argument. You will find that questions are
essential to good reasoning, and in chapter 9 we focus on the questions you need to ask.
Seek out information. Smart thinking requires information. It also helps us when
dealing with information by letting us sift through for the essential things we want
to know. Chapter 8 provides guidance on how to search for and recover informa-
tion analytically—that is, as part of the reasoning process.
Make connections. This activity is crucial. If you are not doing this, you are not
thinking smart. It is like doing a jigsaw puzzle—if you put the pieces together in
the right way, you come up with the 'right answer' (the picture) at the end. The
connections we might make between separate pieces of evidence or ideas are
demonstrated most clearly in chapters 3 and 4.
Interpret and evaluate. Not only do you need to interpret and evaluate what you
read: you also need to do these actions to your own thinking! Chapters 5 and 6 are
all about improving your reasoning and in that process evaluation is critical.

Exercise 1.2

Questioning is rather like concept- or mind-mapping (see chapter 9). However, it
is important that you treat this exercise as one of asking (not trying to answer) the

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