Critical Thinking Skills

I found the use of set skills while critically thinking to be very valuable. It allows you to make a guideline of skills that would be useful when coming to a conclusion after critically thinking. The skills help you keep your focus while discussing or thinking. While using these skills can be valuable, applying them is very problematic. It is very hard for me to keep bias out when I was doing the research topic. Free education being the last topic it was very difficult to keep the bias out. Everyone wants college to be free and to find valid and reliable reasons supporting my thoughts was very complicated. One weakness I realized I had when discussing this topic is that I do not is clarify my position. A lot of the time I tend to switch my position throughout research or discussion. When I hear other people’s opinion I usually change my own. In order to overcome this weakness I plan to fully read my research and write down all the possible positions. By doing so this will allow me to rethink the possibilities before making a final decision. The skill of determining the pros and cons is a skill that I should begin to use. It would help my weakness of changing positions. If I could determine the benefits or disadvantages of an article it would be beneficial for my critical thinking. Another skill that is useful to my critical thinking is “do we have our facts straight?”. Everyone needs to understand the contexts of an article before stating facts and opinions. Sometimes I read something and put it into my own words when that is really not what the author is trying to get across. Critical Thinking is a hard process but by applying the set of skills the class came up with makes the process a little bit easier.