Study and Critical Thinking Skills in College

Description

• Four essential critical-thinking skills are now identified in Chapter 1, which then form the basis for the remainder of the book. These skills involve:
  • Developing inference skills
  • Examining existing opinions and beliefs
  • Recognizing emotional appeals
  • Looking for what is not said (omissions)

• Marginal discipline-specific study tips in each chapter provide suggestions for how to maximize study efficiency in common freshman courses, such as English.
• Each chapter now begins with a set of Learning Goals that are revisited periodically and then summarized at the end of the chapter, to match the learning-based outcomes structure of many college courses.
• Each chapter begins with a brief “Did You Know?” feature that summarizes recent research on thinking and learning. These questions activate students’ schemas by asking them to examine their assumptions and their current thinking and study habits. A photograph or visual now provokes interest and suggests connections to chapter content.
• Chapter 7 includes a new section, “ Textbooks Across the Disciplines,” to help students understand how to best work with different types of textbooks, because textbooks are quite different across the disciplines. Each discipline uses a different set of pedagogical features to help students learn. All of the textbook readings reprinted in this chapter are new to this edition.
• New study tips for students who encounter new and evolving teaching methods, including online and hybrid courses, flipped classrooms, online course management and homework systems, and personal response systems (clickers). Recognizing that students now take tests online, Part 5 provides tips for maximizing success with online quizzes and exams.
• Each chapter includes numerous Critical Thinking in Action boxed activities to help students develop their critical thinking skills. The format of these activities differs from chapter to chapter, but all ask students to closely examine and think critically about a situation, controversy, practice, piece of text, or image.
• A completely new Chapter 9, Multimedia Literacy, introduces the role of visual aids in college learning and provides suggestions for thinking critically about each type, from static illustrations like diagrams and bar graphs through dynamic, video-based learning aids such as videos, documentaries, animations, and computer simulations.
• A new section, “ Evaluating Source Materials,” found in Chapter 12, helps students actively evaluate the many sources of printed and online information by asking them to focus on and think critically about content, accuracy, reliability, authority, timeliness, and objectivity.
• A new Chapter 13, Adapting Skills for Academic Disciplines, emphasizes the different types of thinking necessary in courses across the curriculum and helps students expand their critical-thinking skills into decision making, problem solving, creative thinking, and scientific thinking. The chapter then provides suggestions for adapting these skills to courses in the social sciences and history, the life and physical sciences, mathematics, and literature and the liberal arts.
• A Textbook Reading and Writing Course Simulation in Part 6. Based on a psychology textbook excerpt, this features simulates the reading, note-taking, studying, and test-taking that is expected of students.

I: THINKING AND LEARNING IN COLLEGE

1. Taking Charge of Your College Career

2. Understanding the College System

3. Managing Your Time and Coping with Stress

4. Learning Styles and Teaching Styles

II: THINKING SKILLS FOR THE CLASSROOM

5. Communication Skills for the Classroom

6. Note Taking for College Lectures

III: TEXTBOOK AND ELECTRONIC READING, LEARNING, AND THINKING

7. Learning from Textbooks

8. Learning Specialized Terminology

9. Developing Multimedia and Digital Literacy

10. Learning and Memory

IV: INTEGRATING AND MASTERING COURSE CONTENT

11. Using Academic Thought Patterns to Think and Learn

12. Thinking Critically About Course Content

13. Adapting Your Skills for Academic Disciplines

V: EXAMS: THINKING UNDER PRESSURE

14. Preparing for Exams

15. Reasoning Skills for Objective Exams

16. Taking Essay Exams

VI: COURSE SIMULATION: READING AND WRITING

Kathleen McWhorter is the author of numerous textbooks in the fields of developmental reading, writing, integrated reading and writing, and study skills, as well as in freshman composition. She has over 35 years of teaching experience at the secondary and college levels and has taught reading, writing, and study skills at both a community college and a 4-year college. She holds a doctoral degree in reading education and learning skills.

A unique integration of study and critical-thinking skills to help students succeed

Study and Critical Thinking Skills in College, Student Value Edition, 8/e (loose leaf) aligns closely with the ways students read, study, learn, think, and network in the twenty-first century. McWhorter discusses the active strategies that develop students’ proficiency with text and lecture material, emphasizing that students must adapt how they read and how they study to suit the characteristics of each unique academic discipline. Study and Critical Thinking Skills in College, Student Value Edition, 8/e also encourages students to study and think in ways that match their learning styles and to use technologies (such as online databases and social media) that maximize their productivity.

Additional information