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Critical Reading As Reasoning

Critical reading involves carefully analyzing a text to understand, question, and evaluate the writer's ideas for accuracy and validity. It requires forming evaluative statements about the text's content and properties by examining facts versus opinions, inferences, and overall quality. Readers also formulate meaningful counterclaims in response to the writer's claims by recognizing the value of hedges when stating criticisms. Determining textual evidence allows readers to validate the writer's assertions and their own counterclaims, with good evidence being unified, relevant, specific, accurate, and representative.

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9K views3 pages

Critical Reading As Reasoning

Critical reading involves carefully analyzing a text to understand, question, and evaluate the writer's ideas for accuracy and validity. It requires forming evaluative statements about the text's content and properties by examining facts versus opinions, inferences, and overall quality. Readers also formulate meaningful counterclaims in response to the writer's claims by recognizing the value of hedges when stating criticisms. Determining textual evidence allows readers to validate the writer's assertions and their own counterclaims, with good evidence being unified, relevant, specific, accurate, and representative.

Uploaded by

Isla Vermilion
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Critical Reading as Reasoning

Reasoning – an act of giving statements for justification and explanation. It is the ability of
someone to defend something by giving out reasons.

Critical reading - is a technique for discovering information and ideas within a text.

- Refers to a careful, active, reflective, analytic reading. In actual practice, critical


reading and critical thinking work together.

Critical reading can be defined as the process of understanding, questioning, and


evaluating a text, which is carried out actively and consciously, in order to well assess
the accuracy and validity of a writer’s ideas.

A. Formulating Evaluative Statements

Evaluative statements – it is a way of giving a better explanation to show the strength and the
weaknesses of something through writing.
- It presents a value judgement based on a set of criteria.
- It is used in giving a sound judgement – a judgement that can be backed up
or supported by valid reasons or proofs.
- It is the writer’s way of explaining why strength is strength and a weakness is
a weakness based on the evidence gathered.

How to formulate evaluative statements

Evaluative statements about a text are formulated after having read the text carefully and
critically, grasping the essence of the text and checking for possible fallacies in the argument.

The formulation of the evaluative statements is done in the same way you do any other writing
except that the statement is about your judgment of the text’s content and property.

You may compose your evaluative statements in two steps:

1. Formulating Assertions about the Content and the Properties of a text Read

2. Formulating a meaningful counterclaim in response to a claim made in the text read

Formulating Assertions about the Content and the properties of the text read.

In this step, you have to examine which ideas are facts or opinions, make inferences or
conclusions, and assess the overall quality of the text. This assertions usually contain evaluative
languages such as useful, significant, important, insightful, detailed, up-to- date,
comprehensive, practical, etc.
Formulating a meaningful counterclaim in response to a claim made in the text read.

Counterclaim is the opposition you make about the claim of a writer.

You must recognize the value of hedges when you state your counterclaims.

A hedge is a word or phrase that minimizes negative impact of a criticism.

When you are presenting your counterclaim, you are providing criticism since you are stating
that the claim is not true. Hedge is used to give a courteous tome in your writing.

Hedges could come in different forms such as:

 Modals – may, could, would, etc.


 Frequency adverbs – usually, generally, commonly
 Probability adverbs – probably, possibly, presumably

 Obesity is caused by the bad food choices being offered by the food industry.
 Obesity is probably caused by the bad food choices being offered by the food
industry.

B. Determining textual evidence

To better evaluate the author’s argument, you should be able to determine the evidence from
the text. This will allow you to validate the assertions of the author and your own counterclaims
as a response to reading. Evidence is defined as the details given by the author in order to
support his or her claim. The evidence provided by the writer substantiates the text. It reveals
and builds on the position of the writer and makes the reading more interesting. Evidence is
crucial in swaying the reader to your side. A jury or judge, for example, relies on evidence
presented by a lawyer before it makes a decision regarding a case.

Evidence can include the following:

 facts and statistics (objectively validated information on your subject);


 opinion from experts (leading authorities on a topic, like researchers or academics); and
 personal anecdotes (generalizable, relevant, and objectively considered).

The following are some questions to help you determine evidence from the text:

 What questions can you ask about the claims?


 Which details in the text answer your questions?
 What are the most important details in the paragraph?
 What is each one’s relationship to the claim?
 What details do you find interesting? Why so?
 What are some claims that do not seem to have support? What kinds of support could
they be provided with?
 What are some details that you find questionable? Why do you think so?
 Are some details outdated, inaccurate, exaggerated, or taken out of context?
 Are sources reliable?

The following are the characteristics of good evidence:


 unified;
 relevant to the central point;
 specific and concrete;
 accurate; and
 representative or typical.

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