Book review: Smart Thinking: Skills for Critical Understanding and Writing

BOOK REVIEW Book Title: Smart Thinking: Skills for Critical Understanding and Writing Book Author: Matthew Allen Student: Đặng Tuấn Linh (16/02/2004) - 2212140045 Summary: This book focuses on improving critical thinking skills in reading and writing, thus it helps us understand and practice the way how to think critically, through giving definitions, examples, methods and exercises As a result, we can be more aware of what we are reading or listening; gain a deeper understanding of the reasoning process; and have the right approach to argue effectively and achieve what we want To be more detailed, reading this book allows you to gain an insight into this complex world; to conceive general and important information; to comprehend other people's idea; to understand how to analyze and express your thoughts; to better communicate, illustrate, categorize and structure your ideas; to adapt your ideas to your audience and persuade them; to evaluate, make decisions, address problems and predict the future based on your knowledge and experiences Many people nowadays not pay much attention to think about the reasoning process, which may lead to misunderstanding and improper responding By reading this book, you will know how to make well-formed and well-founded claims, and to become more careful about the ideas you transfer, so as to improve your thinking skills and to deal with your issues more efficiently Main Content: Chapter 1: Smart Thinking What is smart thinking: It is about using knowledge to analyse information to acquire what we need How we study smart thinking: To think about thinking process with the right attitude Why we need to “think smart”: Because it is a very necessary skill that is extremely helpful in your daily life Chapter 2: Claims: The Key Elements of Reasoning Understand language: Claims are the main parts of reasoning Language allows us to make claims about the world Understand more about these claims will affect how we use them in reasoning How claims function differently, as premises or as conclusions, depends on the way we use them The conclusion is what you are explaining or arguing for, while premises help you reach that conclusion Chapter 3: Linking: The Key Process in Reasoning Links between claims: Evidence of the linking process and the problem of understanding linkages The analytical structure of reasoning: Promoting the analytical structure and telling what that structure format can offer: a better way to show how the exact claims being made and the ways in which they relate to one another Learning more about the analytical structure: The analytical structure behind narrative flow is a tool to comprehend other people's reasoning Chapter 4: Understanding the Links between Claims Dependent premises: The reason why premises mostly work with other premises in providing reasons for a conclusion In the analytical structure, what we think of as 'a reason' may require many claims to express all its complexities These claims add together to form a chain of dependent premises Special functions of premises: Discovering the way how a premise can link a group of them to the conclusions, and how a premise can clarify a definition, making other premises understandable The link from premises to conclusion: Learning the way how links are made between premises and conclusions to gain an insight into the process of making premises to support a conclusion Chapter 5: More Effective Reasoning I: Better Claims Well-formed claims: Showing how to write clear claims and understand the main characteristics of claims Well-founded claims: Telling about the 'true' claims, the claims whose veracity is not in question, the claims supported by authority and the claims supported by reasoning Chapter 6: More Effective Reasoning II: Better Links Effective use of dependent premises: Making effective reasoning requires making out the links between dependent premises Carefully expanding our 'reasons' into a completed chain of premises ensures that no premises remain 'implied' Relevance: How relevant premises provide information that does actually bear on the conclusion, while irrelevant premises can not Strength of support: As we saw with well-founded claims, the assessment of the audience’s expectations and other contextual problems plays an important role in ensuring our reasoning's effectiveness Chapter 7: What Kinds of Reasoning are There? Deductive and inductive reasoning: Checking the difference between deductive and inductive reasoning, a popular misunderstood difference Categorical and propositional logic: Showing the ideal categories by which we can define and classify the innumerable things in the world into a regular pattern or order Five types of reasoning: Causal reasoning, Reasoning from generalization, Reasoning from specific cases, Reasoning from analogy and Reasoning from terms Chapter 8: Research, Reasoning, and Analysis Reasoning depends totally on knowledge, as knowledge is the way how we link many little pieces of information about the world together Questions are a way of expressing and examining these links, thus being the key component of the analysis Sources can only be used effectively if we understand that the context in which the source was created is different from the context in which we are using the information from that source If we can not distinguish the contrast between contexts, we also can not correctly evaluating that information We will care about how questions can guide our research, and how we can take information away from the sources, not just as 'information', but in a form that can easily be included in our statements Chapter 9: Planning and Creating Your Reasoning The key analytical questions are: Context - the external dimensions of reasoning, and Text - the internal dimensions of reasoning Using the analytical structure for planning: The analytical structure format can be used, not to shape our statements, but instead to work as a 'plan' of ideas and relationships that can then be used to support writing the narrative flow of reasoning Chapter 10: Bringing It All Together: Narrative and Structure In this final chapter, the author provides a completed example of a real written argument, so as to demonstrate the way which the main form in which we encounter reasoning—the narrative flow—is acknowledged as a sign of an hidden process which links premises and conclusions This example also better demonstrates how you can write something based on an analytical structure, point out the precision of expression that provides a structure surrounding that logical core What I have learned: The definition and importance of smart thinking The key elements and value of the reasoning The types of reasoning: Deductive and inductive reasoning The evaluating process included in reasoning How to improve the logical effectiveness of our reasoning with proper claims and links How to better interpret ideas and thoughts in arguments and presentations How to become a practical smart thinker  ...Summary: This book focuses on improving critical thinking skills in reading and writing, thus it helps us understand and practice the way how to think critically, through giving... reasoning process, which may lead to misunderstanding and improper responding By reading this book, you will know how to make well-formed and well-founded claims, and to become more careful about the... improve your thinking skills and to deal with your issues more efficiently Main Content: Chapter 1: Smart Thinking What is smart thinking: It is about using knowledge to analyse information to acquire