critical thinking skills

HUM 101 APA formated Critical Analysis Essay

Important! Read First

Choose one of the following two assignments to complete this week. Do not do both assignments. Identify your assignment choice in the title of your submission.

Option #1: Critical Analysis Essay

Directions:
Using the concepts learned through the readings and lecture pages, write a critical analysis essay that answers at least three of the following prompts or questions:

1. How might you employ critical thinking as a tool to further your career aspirations?
2. Describe the differences between inert information, assumptions, and inferences. Describe an assumption that you have made in the past that had important consequence.
3. Where do you see yourself using activated ignorance (Links to an external site.) to think about issues? What steps could you take to move towards activated knowledge on this issue?
4. What is the difference between activated ignorance and activated knowledge? Where do you have difficulties “thinking for yourself”? Why does critical thinking demand high levels of intellectual autonomy?
5. Why are concepts, theories, and ideas central to good critical reasoning?

Requirements:

• Cite all claims and ideas using scholarly sources. While it is acceptable to write in the first person, be sure to cite your sources to support your inferences. To understand how to construct your thoughts you can view these short clips on informal and formal writing.
  • Peter Elbow: On Writing (Links to an external site.)
  • Writing for Life: Start 39:58 end 41:30
  • Writing Across the Curriculum: Forgetting formality: Start 29:05 end 32:52
  • Writing Across the Curriculum Revising for Formality: Start 32:53 end 34:48
• Include at least one or two scholarly sources that are not part of the required or recommended reading for this course. The CSU-Global Library (Links to an external site.) is a good place to find these sources.
• Your paper should be four to five pages in length and formatted according to the CSU-Global Guide to Writing & APA (Links to an external site.).
• Papers should be double-spaced, 12-point font Times New Roman.
• Include the following in your essay: a brief introduction (Links to an external site.), a conclusion (Links to an external site.), and a reference page formatted according to CSU-Global APA requirements.
• You may wish to review the Template Paper for help formatting your essay according to the requirements

Option #2: Letter to Your Future Self

Directions:
Using the concepts learned through the readings and lecture pages, write a letter to yourself on critical reasoning that you will read one year from now. This letter should synthesize the concepts you have learned in Modules 1 and 2 to serve as a “benchmark” for your development as a thinker over the next year.

Include the following ideas and terms in your letter:

1. Which parts of the universal intellectual standards or the elements of reason are most difficult for you at this point? What strategies could you implement to grow?
2. To what stage of critical thinking do you aspire in one year? Which parts of the universal intellectual standards and the elements of reason will be most important to your development in critical reasoning? Why?
3. What key concepts or ideas shape your thinking today? How might you actively examine, challenge, and, if necessary, replace these concepts or ideas to expand your critical thinking capacities?

Requirements:

• Cite all claims and ideas using scholarly sources. While it is acceptable to write in the first person, be sure to cite your sources to support your inferences. To understand how to construct your thoughts you can view these short clips on informal and formal writing.
  • Peter Elbow: On Writing (Links to an external site.)
  • Writing for Life: Start 39:58 end 41:30
  • Writing Across the Curriculum: Forgetting formality: Start 29:05 end 32:52
  • Writing Across the Curriculum Revising for Formality: Start 32:53 end 34:48
• Include at least one or two scholarly sources that are not part of the required or recommended reading for this course. The CSU-Global Library (Links to an external site.) is a good place to find these sources.
• Your paper should be four to five pages in length and formatted according to the CSU-Global Guide to Writing & APA (Links to an external site.).
• Papers should be double-spaced, 12-point font Times New Roman.
• Include the following in your essay: a brief introduction (Links to an external site.), a conclusion (Links to an external site.), and a reference page formatted according to CSU-Global APA requirements.
• You may wish to review the Template Paper for help formatting your essay according to the requirements.

Required

• Chapters 4 & 5 in Critical thinking: Tools for taking charge of your learning and your life.
• Egege, S., & Kutieleh, S. (2004). Critical thinking: Teaching foreign notions to foreign students. International Educational Journal, 4(4).

Recommended

• Afflerbach, P., Cho, B., & Kim, J. (2015). Conceptualizing and assessing higher-order thinking in reading. Theory Into Practice. 54(3), 203-212. Doi:10.1080/00405841.2015.1044367
• Johnson-Laird, P. N., & Lee, N. Y. (2006, January). Are there cross-cultural differences in reasoning? Retrieved from http://escholarship.org/uc/item/1tr5n9sr#page-1
• Ybarra, O., Kross, E., & Sanchez-Burks, J. (2014). The “Big idea” that is yet to be: Toward a more motivated, contextual, and dynamic model of emotional intelligence. Academy of Management Perspectives, 28(2), 93-107. doi:10.5465/amp.2012.0106

Answer preview

Critical thinking is one of the success tools that I can employ to rise to higher ranks in my career aspirations, which is one of my life goals. I have always desired and been passionate to become a manager in one of the profitable companies in the country. Critical thinking skills have a huge role to play in impressing any employer. This is according to a survey done by the American Management Association in 2012 showed that executives and managers consider critical thinking skills in an employee as a crucial tool for the success of their companies (Cottrell, 2017). There are four important ways where I can use critical thinking to further my career. One of them is to use critical thinking to come up with solutions to various problems…

 

(1300 words)