Critical Thinking skills session (UG)

Critical Thinking skills UG Group 1 - Friday 12noon to 2pm - Avenue Campus

We aim to equip you with the skills and strategies you need to think, read and write critically during your studies here.

There will also be opportunities to relate the content to work in your own discipline

Overview of the module

This module has been designed to meet the needs of international or overseas students who wish to broaden their study skills by incorporating critical thinking. The module aims to give you the ability to critically read, analyse and comment upon texts written by other people. It also aims to give you the ability to use these texts (written by others) to build your own arguments and become a critical writer. You will become more aware of  what ‘criticality’ is, in the academic sense of the word; be able to conduct basic critical analysis on a text and see how critically analysed source material can build new arguments.

Aims of the module

The main aims of this module are to:

• Develop an understanding of why critically examining knowledge claims is important
• Demonstrate a critical capacity to analyse and evaluate own and others’ beliefs and knowledge claims in a variety of contexts
• Understand the selective and interpretative nature of information (e.g. personal and ideological bias)
• Evaluate reasoning of different kinds
• Make interdisciplinary connections and synthesise information and arguments
• Generate your own arguments and alternatives

Student learning outcomes

Having successfully completed the unit, students will be aware of: 

• How to accurately assess the nature and strength of justification in arguments, even when measures are taken to disguise this
• The use of bias and persuasion in written, diagrammatic and numerical sources
• How to select and summarise arguments clearly and accurately and produce well developed or critical pieces of successful argumentation
• Processes used to evaluate evidence
• How arguments are reasoned and structured, both orally and in written form
• How to extract and synthesise key information from written and spoken sources.

 Learning and teaching methods

The sessions will run as a mixture of lectures and discussions. Students will be expected to participate actively and to produce some written work.

Assessment

This is non- credit bearing. There is no formal assessment for this module.

Further information about the English Academic Purposes can be found on our WEBSITE

The EAP skills support programme offers academic language support to international students who need to develop their English language and academic literacy skills during their studies. All classes are free of charge to international students registered at the University of Southampton. If you want to continue to improve your English, we offer the following academic language skills support classes: academic writing skills; PhD thesis writing skills; Masters level dissertation writing skills; critical thinking skills; presentation & seminar skills and everyday English skills.

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