Critical Thinking Skills For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Chapter 11

Speaking and Listening Critically

IN THIS CHAPTER

Loving lectures and succeeding in seminars

Taking effective notes

Creating the right atmosphere for debate

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 analyze 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 them and ways to extend critical thinking not only from what you read and write but also what you hear and even what you say.

I show how note-taking and even doodling can provide the crucial missing interactive element. And don’t forget, because this chapter has a polemical edge, you can practice your critical thinking skills by weighing the arguments I present.

Getting ...