CHAPTER 5

Critical Thinking, Reading, 

and Writing

The word critical here has a neutral meaning. It doesn’t mean taking a neg-
ative view or finding fault, as when someone criticizes another person for
doing something wrong. Rather, critical here applies to a mental stance of
examining ideas thoroughly and deeply, refusing to accept ideas merely
because they seem sensible at first thought, and tolerating questions that
often lack definitive answers.

5a

What is critical thinking?

Thinking isn’t something you choose to do, any more than a fish chooses to
live in water. To be human is to think. But while thinking may come natu-
rally, awareness of how you think doesn’t. Thinking about thinking is the key
to critical thinking.

Critical thinking

means taking control of your conscious thought

processes. If you don’t take control of those processes, you risk being con-
trolled by the ideas of others. The essence of critical thinking is thinking
beyond the obvious—beyond the flash of visual images on a television
screen, the alluring promises of glossy advertisements, the evasive state-
ments by some people in the news, the half-truths of propaganda, the manip-
ulations of 

SLANTED LANGUAGE

, and faulty reasoning.

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5a

CRITICAL THINKING, READING, AND WRITING

For a food that is traced to Neolithic beginnings, like Mexico’s

tortillas, Armenia’s lahmejoun, Scottish oatcakes, and even matzos, pizza
has remained fresh and vibrant. Whether it’s galettes, the latest thin-
crusted invasion from France with bacon and onion toppings, or a plain
slice of a cheese pie, the varieties of pizza are clearly limited only by
one’s imagination.

—Lisa Pratt, “A Slice of History”

E X E R C I S E   4 - 1 0

Working individually or in a peer-response group, return to

Exercise 4-1, in which you wrote introductory paragraphs for three informally
outlined essays. Now, write a concluding paragraph for each.

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