Essential for university
Reading critically consists of constantly asking yourself questions.
- You may consider your own reactions to the content of the text and it's to you personally.
Analyses how you plan to use the text and ask yourself:
- Do I agree with this viewpoint?
- How does it relate to what I already know?
- Is this text relevant to my needs? Does it help to answer my questions?
- You may also wonder how far the content of the text can be trusted, in other words, if it
is reliable - Does this text provide facts or opinions?
- If the text contains facts, has any data been obtained from research? How has the data
been gathered?
- If the text contains opinions, are these supported with evidence and relevant reasons?
- Is the argument convincing or is it unclear and not completely logical?
- The issue of objectivity is also important:
- Could the author be influenced by personal feelings or the context in which he or she
writes? In other words, is the author's objective?
- Has the author considered other contrasting viewpoints?
- What other perspectives or points of view could there be?
- Finally, it is also very important to find out when the text was written:
- When was this information produced?
- Is the data still useful or are more current statistics available?
Reading critically consists of constantly asking yourself questions.
- You may consider your own reactions to the content of the text and it's to you personally.
Analyses how you plan to use the text and ask yourself:
- Do I agree with this viewpoint?
- How does it relate to what I already know?
- Is this text relevant to my needs? Does it help to answer my questions?
- You may also wonder how far the content of the text can be trusted, in other words, if it
is reliable - Does this text provide facts or opinions?
- If the text contains facts, has any data been obtained from research? How has the data
been gathered?
- If the text contains opinions, are these supported with evidence and relevant reasons?
- Is the argument convincing or is it unclear and not completely logical?
- The issue of objectivity is also important:
- Could the author be influenced by personal feelings or the context in which he or she
writes? In other words, is the author's objective?
- Has the author considered other contrasting viewpoints?
- What other perspectives or points of view could there be?
- Finally, it is also very important to find out when the text was written:
- When was this information produced?
- Is the data still useful or are more current statistics available?
