Students often face the task of writing critical thinking papers, which can be tricky at times. However, not everything is as bad as one may think. Writing critical thinking essays is a task that should not bring any problems to a student, especially when they have been trained by their lecturers or professors. You need to have a certain set of skills in order for you to write a perfect critical thinking essay. Critical thinking is essential in life, and it gives one a chance to evaluate different situations, reflect on possible results, and manage everything without any prejudice.
This is why some student finds critical thinking papers hard to deal with because the information is hard to process as opposed to when one is rewriting everything. You need to have the best critical thinking topics for papers because, at the end of it, the supervisor expects you to demonstrate your thoughts instead of paying attention to the structure or usefulness of facts. The idea of writing these essays is to show how the opinions of the author can change with the introduction of new data. For instance, you can argue in support of gun ideas in schools but change your opinion as new sources come about.
You must have good critical thinking skills even though they are hard to master. However, it does not mean writing critical thinking essays are doomed. With knowledge on how you can develop good critical thinking topic for papers, and the training that you get in class, you can ace this assignment. Even as such, some students opt for online, writing services with their critical thinking essays assignment because that is where they think the best grades will come from.
When you develop critical thinking skills, you also enhance your analytical skills, and you can formulate a sound argument. As opposed to narrative essays and other reviews, students doing this assignment are allowed to include their thoughts, contemplate on the meaning and value of a specific text as well as analyses the crucial issues. Writing skills and the ability to develop the arguments that are thoughtful and coherent are some of the grading criteria used by the professors.
On the other hands, critical thinking essays analyses a text, article, fil, or even a painting. It offers an interpretation of some aspects of a text or to put the text in a broader context.
How to prepare before you can write a critical thinking essay
Before you can even think of the writing process involved in critical thinking papers, there are several things you need to know. They include:
Ensure you understand the assignment
Once you get the assignment from your professor or teacher, read the guidelines, and highlight anything that you do not understand. As your professor or teacher to make the instructions more clear to enable to enhance your understanding of the critical thinking essays assignment.
Engage in critical reading of your sources
Depending on the critical thinking topics for papers that you have, it is crucial to evaluate a book, a movie or a painting depending on what your teacher wants you to achieve. You have to familiarize yourself with the source material as much as you can. Ensure you know the text inside out by reading repeatedly. If you are dealing with a visual text, like a piece of art or film, watch the film severally or view the painting repeatedly in all angles and distances.
Take notes as you acquaint yourself with the source material
Taking notes helps in remembering important aspects of the source material. It also enhances your critical thinking concerning the next step. What you need to keep in mind include what the text is all about, the main ideas, what puzzles you about the text, the purpose of the text and if the text has accomplished its purpose or not.
Go through your notes identifying patterns and problems.
Part of writing critical thinking papers is to take notes as you examine the source material. Go through these notes to determine what problems stand out for you and the patterns that are there. You can identify a solution to one of the problems you have singled out. This solution should help you in developing a focus for your critical thinking essays. However, you need not to have a solid argument about your text at this point since as you continue critically thinking about it, you will get close to focusing and narrowing down on your thesis for the essay.
Doing your research
As it is with other academic papers, critical thinking papers require one to conduct adequate research. You have to consult your assignment guidelines to help you with the questions about this type of sources you need for this assignment. You can also get this information from your lecturer. Books scholarly journals, articles, newspaper articles and so on are some of the sources you can use when researching critical thinking topics for papers.
You can also use library databases as opposed to general online research. You can get free access to articles and other resourceful material that are not accessible through search engines.
Ascertain the credibility of your sources though evaluation
Remember that you are writing critical thinking essays that are supposed to utilize credible sources. As such, you have to evaluate every source that you have to ascertain that they are reliable and credible. When you use library databases, you are bound to get more trustworthy sources as opposed to when you are using search engines. Consider the author and his credentials the citations, bias, information provided from the source, date of its publication. This information is essential in determining if the author of the source material researched the topic adequately or not.
Go through your research
After you gather information concerning the critical thinking topics for papers, it is time you to go tough your research. Read these sources and use the careful reading strategy you applied with your primary sources. Read these sources repeatedly and ensure you fully understand them.
Take notes as you read these sources
Taking notes is an essential preparation step before writing critical thinking papers. You can underline significant passages so that you can recognize them easily when you come back. Write down any significant information from your sources in a notebook and indicate we you have quote a source verbatim. This can be done by putting these words in quotation marks including the information that pertains to the source. It can be the name of the author, book, or article title and so on.
Writing the essay
Come up with a tentative thesis for your essay
One tactic you can apply when writing critical thinking essays is to come up with a tentative thesis for your essay. This should come after you develop the ideas concerning the primary sources. If you want to have an effective thesis statement for your critical thinking papers, you have to develop it in a manner that expresses the focus of the essay and presents an arguable claim. You can use a multi-sentence statement whose first sentence offers the general idea and the second one makes it a more refined idea.
Your thesis ought to provide enough details and should come at the end of the first paragraph unless the instructions require you to put it somewhere else. Just like other essays, critical thinking papers have their thesis statement placed as the final sentence of the introduction paragraph.
Develop an outline
You can ensure you do not leave any important information in your critical thinking essays is to formulate a rough outline. When you write an outline, you can organize your essay more effectively. The outline can be detailed as much as possible or as scant as you prefer. What you need to know is that the more details you include in the outline, the more you will have to write your critical thinking papers.
You can use a formal outline structure with Roman numerals, Arabic numerals, and letters. On the other hand, you can use an informal mind map as an outline. This gives you more room to gather your ideas together before getting that complete idea of how they progress.
Begin writing your essay with a catchy sentence that delves right into the topic
The introductory paragraph of your critical thinking essays ought to begin discussing your topic right away. Pay attention to what you are discussing in your essay to assist you in determining what to include in the introduction. Your introduction ought to identify the major idea of your critical thinking essays, which also acts as a preview of the whole paper. You can also open the essay using evocative information that connects to your major idea, use a question, or provide compelling and accurate statistics.
Give your audience background information
Providing adequate background information about your critical thinking topics for paper shelps in guiding the audience through your essay. Think of what the readers want to know and give this information in your first paragraph. This information is contingent on the type of text you have been asked to write about.
- If your writing is based on a book, provide its name
- If it’s a film, give a brief synopsis
- If it’s a painting or any other still image, describe it to your readers
Ensure that your background information should tie back to your thesis statement.
Discuss specific components of your text in the body paragraphs
Instead of talking about multiple aspects in the body of your critical thinking papers, ensure that every paragraph deal with a single aspect of your text. This should help in contributing and proving your thesis. You provide a claim at the start of the paragraph, support it with at least one example from primary sources, and use another secondary example too.
Develop an excellent conclusion for your essay
Effective conclusions for critical thinking papersshould emphasize whatever that you were trying to show the readers about the text. Before writing the conclusion, you can take some time to reflect on whatever that you have written so far and try to decide the best way to end your critical thinking essays.Ending this essay can take several options that can help you in deciding the right format to end it. You can:
- Summarize and review the major points about the text
- Explain how the topic affects the audience
- Explain how you narrow topic applies to the broader theme
- Cal the audience to action to explore the topic further
- Present new queries introduced by your critical thinking essay
Fine-tuning the essay
The process of writing critical thinking papers can be daunting, and as such, you need to take some time off before you can go through the paper, making corrections. You can do it by:
- Taking a break from the work
You can take some time off from the process of writing your critical thinking papers. It can be a day or two to allow your brain to rest. As such, you must start writing the paper far ahead of time to allow yourself for a few days of the writing process. It will help in giving you a new perspective and a fresh mind when you come back to name the necessary changes.
- Substantive revision
You need to take your time to do some substantive revisions on any of the critical thinking essays that you write. You revise your paper paying attention to multiple aspects. Ascertain that you are well within your major argument and identify areas that need clarification. See if you have met the needs of the audience and know to establish the purpose of your critical thinking essay.
Find out if every part of your paper relates to your thesis and check on the effectiveness of the evidence.
Editing and proofreading
Edit and proofread the essay to ensure it is in line with the instructions of the assignment. Once you ascertain that submit your assignment.
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