Critical Thinking: Study Skills

What is critical thinking?

Critical thinking is a mental process of questioning and evaluating what you read, hear, and see. Being able to question ideas or arguments and not accept them at face value is part of the process.

Demonstrating critical thinking

Although 'critical thinking' is often discussed as if it's a single skill, successful critical thinking draws upon several skills or activities you possess as a learner:

• Analysing – Breaking information down and drawing together your own judgements of the evidence, then synthesising or recombining it in different ways and explaining how parts fit into a whole.
• Interpreting – The ability to understand information, look at trends and patterns, identify repetition, and note the finer details which may help you clarify its meaning.
• Reasoning – Using a logical process to build an argument.
• Evaluating – Judging the strength of an argument and ensuring that it is well supported. For more information on this key skill take a look at the Evaluating Information page on this site. 

The process of critical thinking

• Critical reading – Questioning the information and arguments in the text.
• Critical reflection – Deepening your learning by focusing on your experiences to help you clarify your thinking.
• Reasoning – Developing a line of step-by-step logic (that is, reasoning) to reach a conclusion.
• Critical writing – Supporting your argument via clear, well-structured and well-referenced writing. Take a look at Writing Critically for more guidance.  

The self-paced module Critical Thinking Skills explores how to develop your abilities and overcome barriers when it comes to critical thinking. Select 'University of Southampton' as your institutional log-in.

Getting started

Explore our guidance below for critical thinking processes and tools to help improve your critical thinking skills.

Steps to critical thinking

• Process - Gather together all you have read, seen, heard or which you have taken part in.
• Understand - Sort out the key points, arguments and evidence.
• Analyse - Determine how key elements relate to one another.
• Compare - Explore similarities and differences in ideas you encounter.
• Synthesise - Bring together different resources to support an argument you are constructing. Logical connections between these resources will help to support your argument.
• Evaluate - Assess how important an idea is in terms of what you are investigating, on what evidence it is based, and how it relates to other relevant ideas.
• Apply - Use the understanding from your critical evaluation in response to questions and assignments.
• Justify - Use critical thinking to develop arguments, draw conclusions and identify implications.

The '5W + 1H' system

You can use the six questions (5W + 1H system) to improve your critical thinking. Think about the six questions – What, Who, When, Where, Why, and How – as demonstrated in the table below.

	Question	Example
	What	What are the main messages, arguments, results, or findings? What type of source is it?  e.g. a research study, professional opinion, discussion, website or other?
	Who	Who is the target audience? Who has written, said or produced the source? Is the author/speaker an organisation or an individual? Are they an expert in the topic? Could they have any bias? How do you know?
	When	When was it published or updated? Check if recent work is available; older key information may still be valid.
	Where	Where did you find the information? Where was it published? Did you find the information by chance? Or did you find it through a systematic search? Is the information on a reputable platform (e.g. an academic database) or an unverified website?
	Why	Why has this been written, said or produced? What is the aim of the information? Who is the information aimed at – professionals, patient/client groups, the general public?
	How	How has the author/speaker come to their conclusions? Is their line of reasoning logical and understandable? If it is research or a review of research, how was it carried out, was it done well and do the conclusions reflect the findings?

Six questions (5W+1H) to trigger your critical thinking (adapted from Aveyard et al., 2015).

Reflective learning cycles

Actively reflecting on your learning process can enable richer critical thinking. In broad terms, reflective cycles are an approach to learning in which you...

• Make note of things that happen;
• Assess whether they were positive/negative/neutral;
• Evaluate how and why they happened that way;
• Apply your observations to develop a new plan moving forward.

Check out our Reflection and Reflective Practices guide to explore organised models you can use to enhance your skills in this area.

Further tools to develop critical thinking skills

Students frequently get feedback suggesting they need to improve their critical thinking or that their writing is too descriptive. This may mean there needs to be a well-constructed argument, an evaluation of the evidence, or more critical reflection on the evidence. Take a look at these resources to develop your skills: 

• Succeeding in postgraduate study: Session 4: 4 The difference between descriptive and critical writing - This OpenLearn course from the Open University focuses on understanding the difference between descriptive writing and a critical stance. There is a table that provides examples of the differences between descriptive writing and critical/analytical writing.

Critical thinking tools for Health Sciences students

• 'Be More Critical!' A practical guide for Health and Social Care students - Oxford Brookes University have created a guide about critical thinking, writing and approaches aimed at health and social care students.
• Critical appraisal of a journal article - A critical appraisal guide created by UCL, focusing on medicine.

Critical reflective writing tools 

• Reflective Writing Activity - Teesside University have created a tutorial to develop criticality in reflective writing.
• Practice-based and reflective learning - The University of Reading have guidance about reflective thinking and reflective writing. 

What does an argument include?

Academic writing often develops a central argument by posing a series of claims supported by evidence. Typically, an academic argument will include...

• A position – A point of view or a stance.
• Evidence – Facts, data, etc. to validate the position.
• A line of reasoning – Logical interpretations or explanations.
• Persuasion – The quality of moving readers toward accepting the stated position.
• Signal words and phrases – To help follow the direction of the argument (e.g. however, therefore, nonetheless, thus).
• Conclusion – The position the author wants you to accept.

The role of assumptions in argument

Assumptions are the logical connections or premises that underpin presentations of claims and evidence when crafting an academic argument. In many cases, assumptions are 'taken for granted' and won't be stated explicitly.

Let's imagine an author has written a paper analysing the performance of a fictitious business called Cat Costumes 365. In a section of the writing where they make suggestions for change, the author presents this argument:

'Cat Costumes 365 should consider closing its physical office and having all administrative and sales staff work from home. This change would save the company £60,000 per year in rent and utilities.'

Here, the yellow text presents the stance or claim the author is forwarding: the business should shut down its head office and have everyone work remotely. The blue text presents the corresponding evidence: cost savings by eliminating rent and utilities. So what are the unspoken assumptions that logically underpin this pairing of claim and evidence?

• First off, the author assumes that businesses want to save money. The author doesn't bother stating this explicitly because rational readers will already know this!
• Next, the author assumes that the sum of £60K/year is sufficiently compelling for the company to consider such a huge change. Moving to fully remote operations would require overhauling all in-house procedures: quite an investment of staff time and pay! If Cat Costumes 365 is raking in a billion pounds a year, we can see that the author's argument suddenly looks much less convincing.
• However, the author additionally seems to assume that shifting from in-person work to at-home work won't disrupt or reduce the company's earnings. But do we actually know this is the case? What if the company now needs to pay a large annual sum for IT packages to support a fully remote work base? What if the physical office was used to host potential clients and lock in sales?
• Additionally, this argument could be read as assuming that it is more important to consider cost savings than company culture and team interconnectivity when shaping home vs. office working patterns. The cost savings are compelling evidence to support the stance, true, but the assumption of a 'cost over all else' mentality might not be shared by all business theorists, who could highlight additional factors companies must consider in contemplating such a colossal change.

As you can see, the tricky thing about assumptions is that you usually have to read between the lines to delve into the reasoning an author is following when connecting claims to evidence. Sometimes, the assumptions are total 'no duh' moments that call for no further examination. At other times, however, strong critical thinking will compel you to reveal and question the assumptions, perhaps finding flaws or omissions in what first sounded like a perfectly convincing argument.

Identifying arguments resources 

• Argument – The Writing Center - The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have created this handout, which defines what an argument is and explains why you need one in most academic essays.

Sources of evidence

To demonstrate critical thinking and construct robust arguments, you need to consider what sources you use. You will need to assess if sources appropriately support your arguments and whether the source is reliable and good quality. Take a look at Evaluating Information for more guidance; you may also find it useful when managing your sources to use a source evaluation table/spreadsheet or annotated bibliography.

Primary sources

Primary sources originate from the time and place of the events being investigated. They provide firsthand, direct evidence and may include the following:

• Contemporary letters, documents, photographs
• Court transcripts and legislation
• Media footage, artefacts, raw data
• Autobiographies
• Data from surveys, questionnaires, the census, etc.

Secondary sources

Secondary sources are those which synthesise, comment upon, critique/analyse, make sense of, or otherwise reprocess primary sources:

• Textbooks and encyclopedias (including digital versions)
• Biographies
• Reviews or critiques of artefacts such as novels, plays, theatre/music productions, etc.
• Papers and reports using the results of surveys, questionnaires and experiments

Disciplinary differences

Do note that your discipline and writing context can influence whether something is considered a primary or secondary source. For example, consider a newspaper article: is that primary or secondary? It depends!

• If you were writing a nursing essay, a recent newspaper article about a new NHS policy would be considered secondary. This is because you are reading a secondhand presentation of the policy rather than examining the text of the NHS policy itself.
• However, if you were writing a history essay about the American Civil War, a newspaper article published in 1864 would be considered primary. This is because it would represent an immediate perspective on the historical moment you're examining.

Reputable sources

When contemplating which sources to use, reputability should be a top priority:

• Has it been recommended by a trustworthy source?
• If a journal article, is it from a peer-reviewed journal?
• Is there a clear line of reasoning, with supporting evidence?
• Does it include a detailed list of references, indicating thorough research?

Check out your Subject Guide for a detailed list of books, journals and databases, and key resources suggested for your field. 

Sources of evidence resources

To develop your ability to use sources of evidence, you may find it useful to check out these resources for support:

• The Critical Thinking Toolkit - De Montfort University designed this toolkit of interactive activities to introduce students to critical thinking (including recognising how cognitive biases influence how we interact with information, evaluating the reliability of information, and critically reading and writing).

• Evidence Tips & Tools - UNC created this handout, which has a broad overview of gathering and using evidence.