Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is "the art of thinking about your thinking while you are thinking in order to make your thinking better: more clear, more accurate, or more defensible." This quote, as confusing as it it, best explains my critical thinking process when I am writing any paper. I always critique myself as I'm writing and trying to find better ways to express myself and make my points clearer, more accurate, and solid. I do the best I can to make my points as defensible as possible which shows that I put the work into researching and really thinking about what I have read and learned.

Also, the "development of cohesive and logical reasoning patterns" is another way that I think critically when writing. If my points do not make sense I have no way of defending them if they are challenged. It also shows that I haven't really thought about what I am researching: just regurgitating information. My reasoning also has to make sense. Like the quite says, I try my best to reason my thinking. If someone were to read my paper they need to be able to understand why I am saying what I am saying. This is all a part of the critical thinking process. It can't just be a list of things I learned after researching there has to be thought and time put into my writing.

As a whole, my method of critical thinking when I am writing can be summed up by the following quote:
"Critical thinking includes the ability to respond to material by distinguishing between facts and opinions or personal feelings, judgments and inferences, inductive and deductive arguments, and the objective and subjective. It also includes the ability to generate questions, construct, and recognize the structure of arguments, and adequately support arguments; define, analyze, and devise solutions for problems and issues; sort, organize, classify, correlate, and analyze materials and data; integrate information and see relationships; evaluate information, materials, and data by drawing inferences, arriving at reasonable and informed conclusions, applying understanding and knowledge to new and different problems, developing rational and reasonable interpretations, suspending beliefs and remaining open to new information, methods, cultural systems, values and beliefs and by assimilating information."

I do the best I can to reseach for my essays as if they were a scientific experiment. Looking for answers, evaulating my findings, deciding what is logically sound and what is not., etc. I just want my writing to reflect thoughts that have been picked apart and analyzed until I am firm in my understanding and viewpoint of a topic so that I can defend it rationally and soundly without faltering.