Developing Critical Thinking as an Essential Life Skill
Critical thinking is an essential skill that involves the analysis of facts to form a judgement. It is the ability to analyze or evaluate a piece of information or idea as well as present excellent evidence for them, rather than myopically accepting your reasoning as sufficient proof. Individuals with strong critical thinking skills are rational, reflective, independent and competent. Practising critical thinking entails logically connecting ideas, scrutinizing and evaluating arguments, finding inconsistencies and errors in your work and the work of others, solving complex problems as well as reflecting frequently.
Critical thinking is considered a soft skill. Although mostly inherent, it can be developed by asking questions, questioning basic assumptions and evaluating the existence of things. Today, we bring you five tips to help improve your critical thinking skills.
Evaluate New Information
The first and perhaps basic step to developing critical thinking skills is by evaluating the information before finally accepting them. Whether documented or not, critical thinkers strive to find the objective truth. The process of vetting new information and considering various possible outcomes is called evaluation. This takes you a step forward in your critical thinking journey.
Verify the Source
It is important to verify the source of the information received rather than accepting them. To develop critical thinking skill, you must evaluate the source of any information or idea by first considering the motivation behind them.
Ask Questions
Asking questions is an important life skill to master if you are trying to perfect your critical thinking skills. When presented with a piece of information, you must decide what questions will help you evaluate them better and seek answers immediately.
Follow up with research
Before you can critically form an opinion, you must carry out several relevant studies. Once you have collated a list of questions that require tactful answers, it is important to utilize resources such as the internet, to learn what you can about the issue.
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Form an opinion
After thoroughly researching answers to critical questions, you can then form your opinion. At this stage, it is okay to confidently state that your opinions are logical and factual.
Beyond these tips, various activities also help to aid critical thinking. For more ideas on developing this basic life skill, we have curated 10 strategy games that can help boost your thinking. They include Chess, Monopoly, Shogi, Checkers, Nine Men’s Morris, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (Board Version), ConnectFour, Catan, Cathedral, and Backgammon.
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