Asking The Right Questions - Cha

Asking The Right Questions - Chapter 3

Summary

The first step for critical thinking is to find someone's reasoning, including the issue and the conclusion. The identification of  the issue and the conclusion seems simple but actually needs adequate practice.

Media in current society tend to feed perceptions or beliefs to its readers. To form a reasonable reaction to their persuasive effort, we must first identify the controversy or issue as well as the thesis or conclusion. Otherwise, we are likely to form a distorted version of the attempted communication.

But the truth is, readers or audience always react more to the images, dramatic illustrations or tone of what was said instead of the reasoning. The conversation between us and the person who wrote or spoke to us has experienced a defeat each time we fail to react to the reasoning. That illustrates the vitality of getting straight about the person's conclusion and issue to make effective human interaction.

An issue is a question or controversy responsible for the conversation or discussion. It is the stimulus for what is being said. There are two kinds of issues: descriptive issues and prescriptive issues. Descriptive issues are those that raise questions about the accuracy of descriptions of the past, present, or future. Prescriptive issues are those that raise questions about what we should do or what is right or wrong, good or bad.

The basic question and issue may be identified in the body of the text, usually right at the beginning, or it may even be found in the title. Sometimes it is explicitly stated and sometimes must be inferred from other clues in the communication.

A conclusion is the message that the speaker or writer wishes you to accept. We cannot critically do evaluation until we find the conclusion. Conclusions are inferred; they are derived from reasoning,  shown in the structure or proved by the set of ideas the author presented.

There are a number of clues to help you identify the conclusion.

Clue No. 1: Ask what the issue is.

Clue No. 2: Look for indicator words.

Clue No. 3: Look in likely locations.

Clue No. 4: Remember what a conclusion is not.

Clue No. 5: Check the context of the communication and the author's back-ground.

Clue No. 6: Ask the question, "and therefore?"

Thought

这本书很有趣的一个地方就是有很多例证，语言也通俗易懂 ，叙述直白在理，虽然内容单调，但不显得枯燥，倒是觉得像上了一堂课一般有趣。

本章着重讲论题（issue）和结论（conclusion）的重要性、辨别方法和技巧。其实多数情况下读者在阅读时这些的是“中心思想”“论点”“起因结果”等。文章换了个说法——论题，其实大同小异。区别就是，这次我们不是被动地接受，而是主动获取。态度改变，过程跟着改变，结果也就不同了。