Critical Thinking

by Sara Hannam in Teacher resources

The ability to evaluate and analyse a situation by applying critical reasoning is a crucial skill in everyday life, as well as in education. For students preparing for university, developing critical thinking skills is now highly regarded as a key ingredient for academic success.

Critical thinking skills form an important part of decision making, problem solving and being able to qualify your judgements.

More life skills resources

In Company 3.0: Making decisions under pressure

Critical thinking is easier when time is on your side, but what happens when you are under pressure or even face a life or death situation? This upper intermediate worksheet from In Company 3.0 looks at how you might respond in a life or death situation, when you only have a split second to think.

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2.22  2.23  2.24  2.25  2.26  2.27  2.28  2.29

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Open Mind: Types of bias

No matter how information is reported there will invariably be an element of bias. This advanced worksheet from Open Mind looks at different kinds of bias and encourages students not to take information at face value. Rather, they should learn to think critically and evaluate sources with reasoning.

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Lesson: Critical Thinking

This lesson explains what critical thinking is and why it is an important life skill. It also provides information about how to think critically and gives students the opportunity to put their own critical thinking into practice.

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Article: Developing Critical Thinking Skills

In this article from our life skills examples, Dr Sara Hannam discusses the importance of developing critical thinking skills and how we can teach these skills to university level students in the EAP (English for Academic Purposes) classroom. 

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Lesson: Critical Thinking

How deeply do you think about information you read or hear? This lesson encourages students to think more critically about things like news reports, advertising and information found online.

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Lesson: Challenging Assumptions

Do you question your assumptions? This lesson is designed to get your students reflecting on their critical thinking skills and thinking about how quickly we make assumptions.

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For Fun: Timetable Challenge

Test your logic! Using the clues, can you fill out the timetable accurately?

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For Fun: Critical Thinking Puzzle

Work out the quote! Using your knowledge of English words, can you work out this famous quote by Aristotle?

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Onestopenglish Lesson: Reviews

Being able to critically express your opinion is important. In this lesson, students recommend and review their favourite local restaurants.

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Onestopenglish Lesson: Movie Review

Analysing information and thinking critically are important skills. In this lesson, students write a review of imaginary movies using pictures as a guide.

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"Obstacles, of course, are developmentally necessary: they teach kids strategy, patience, critical thinking, resilience and resourcefulness." 

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by Sara Hannam in Teacher resources