Critical Thinking Skills For Dummies

Chapter 11

Speaking and Listening Critically: Effective Learning

In This Chapter

Loving lectures and succeeding in seminars

Taking effective notes

Doodling for success

The growth of knowledge depends entirely on disagreement.

—Karl Popper

Critical Thinking is an active, questioning activity that inevitably involves speaking and listening critically. In order to communicate your own ideas and views effectively, and to appreciate and analyse those of others, you need to interact with people, hearing what they're saying and responding clearly.

In this chapter I suggest ways to make lectures, seminars, discussions and meetings, all kinds of activity where speech predominates, more productive. I discuss the pros and cons of formal lectures versus less structured methods of learning.

Despite my reservations about lectures, I include some practical strategies for getting more out of seminars and lectures and ways to extend Critical Thinking from not only what you read and write but to what you hear and even what you say.

I show how note-taking and doodling can provide the crucial missing interactive element. And don't forget, as this chapter has a polemical edge you can practise your Critical ...