Critical Thinking vs Critical Reading

Every person in this world thinks, but do all people think critically? Clearly not. In my opinion, thinking critically means that you have an active way to face a text or a discussion, it means that you question what you read or hear, and you don't take things for granted, it means that you seek for true knowledge and you don't conform with the first idea you get. 


Critical thinking is something that we should apply in every day of our lives. Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and
skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or
evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation,
experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief

and action.

In the other hand, we have Critical Reading. But before being a critical reader, we need to be Active Readers!. An active reader is a reader who pays attention to the reading and who draws conclusions, make predictions, imagines himself/herself as the character, and re-reads passages that he/she does not understand. An active reader can be a critical reader by complementing his detailed reading with his own beliefs, ideas and thoughts, and by seeking for true and valid arguments.

A good definition for Critical Reader will be: Critical reading refers to interpreting any written text with both a literal and figurative perspective. If readers are not reading critically, they are simply able to repeat obvious facts that are presented on the surface. Critical reading, however, requires the reader to dig much deeper than surface meaning in order to find key elements of the text. Combined with critical thinking strategies, the reader can use various methods in order to better understand the text.

For any further information, I really recommend to visit http://www.criticalreading.com/

Sources:

Critical Reading Definition: http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/2058095#ixzz1sRRbFSJd

Active Reader Definition: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_an_active_reader#ixzz1sROwnRLo
Critical Thinking Definition: http://lonestar.texas.net/~mseifert/crit2.html

Critical Reading: The Big Sleep (extract)

In this entry, I will put in practice what I've learnt about Literature analysis. Follow the link below to hear my commentary about an extract from The Big Sleep, found in the page 75 from my Course Companion Book from the IB.

Practical Criticism: "You fit into me"

In this entry I will be analyzing a poem called "You fit into me", by the Canadian writer Margaret Atwood. For this analysis, I will use a New Criticism point of view, this means, I will focus in the poem, leaving apart its context and writer. To organize the analysis, I will answer different questions about the poem (Taken from Course Companion Book, IB)

A Human Eye.

   
    You fit into me


    You fit into me
    like a hook into an eye
    A fish hook
    An open eye.


1.- What is the relationship between the title and the rest of the poem?
The title tells us about someone or something that fits the persona, while the poem describes how does it fit, and the real meaning of the title. 


2.- What words, if any, need to be defined?
-Hook-and-eye: A clothes fastener consisting of a small blunt metal hunk that is inserted in a corresponding loop or eyelet.

A Hook-and-Eye.

3.- What relations do you see among any words in the poem?
The author relates a hook (or fish hook) with an eye. This two words change their meaning as you read the poem.


4.- What are the various connotative meaning of the words in the poem? Do you see various shades of meaning help establish relationships or patterns in the text?
In this poem, the author plays with the various conceptions of "hook" and "eye". She relates both as the thing used to attach clothes, but then she changes their meaning to a fish hook and a human eye.

A Fish Hook.

 5.- What symbols, images or figures of speech are used? What is the relationship between them?
The poem itself is a big irony. It creates us an image of an eye-and-hook in the first to lines, to make us surprisingly realize that it means the opposite in the verses 3 and 4. 


6.- What elements of rhyme, meter or pattern can you discuss?
There is no rhyme, the amount of syllables in each verse is different and there are no patterns. In other words, this poem has Free Verses.


7.- What is the tone of the poem?
Remorse and fury.


8.- From what point of view is the content of the poem being told?
From a person who had a love relation with someone, but now he/she is alone. Also, we can infer that there was a violent or ugly end in their relation.


9.- What tensions, ambiguities or paradoxes arise within the poem?
There is an ambiguity with the word Hook and eye. First, we imagine two persons caught by love, like a hook and an eye (clothing conception), but then, the real meaning is the pain that a fish hook causes in a human eye (referring to a bad relationship between those two persons)


10.- What do you believe the chief paradox or irony is in the text?
To express the suffering, fury and anger of a person that was in love but now he/she is alone. It also shows the remorse of this person against his/her old date.


11.- How do all of the elements of the poem support and develop the primary paradox or irony?
They all contribute to express the emotions of the persona. The irony is based in the different ideas that the reader has when he reads the poem, specially for the hook-and-eye term.

The real meaning!

Finally, it's important to note how this poem expresses a lot of emotions through an irony. Instead of just telling you what happened, this poem gives us the information in an artistic way.

Literature: How can we study it?

Once we introduced ourselves in Literature, we need to learn the ways we can study and analyze it. However, there are many different theories about Literature and about which point of view should we consider to analyze it. In this entry, I will present some of the theories that we have studied in class.

Greeks: In the early 400s, Greeks thought that Literature was concern with human behavior and its relationship with the physical world, society and ethics.  

Romanticism: It believes that Literature expresses feelings,  everyday life and nature through common language. 

Scientific Determinism: They thought that science had the answer to all types of questions, including the Literature's ones.

New Criticism: It focuses in the text itself, leaving context, author and other information aside. 

Saussure's work.

Reader Response: It believes that reader's own experience plays an important role in the interpretation of the text.

Structuralism: Saussure's work stated that words were signs composed by a signifier (Actual word) and a signified (Mental structure or image).

Post-Structuralism: It establishes that we learn by differences. A is A because it's not B.

Marxism: All texts have subtexts that are related, in some way, with something that happens it the real world. 

Feminism: It uses Literature to describe women's experiences and lives. 

Cultural Poetics: It describes History as the central part of knowledge. It studies every part of society and its history to make relationships with human life meaning. 

Postcolonial Criticism: It's an approach to texts produced in colonized countries, considering nationalism, laws, ethnicity and language.

Dramatic Presentation: The Tower of Babel!

Today, in our Language and Literature Classes we had to make an oral presentation. For this, we had to choose one topic related to language and present it to the class in groups. Some of the options to present were a role play, an oral presentation or a dramatic presentation.

I worked with Mr. Barriga and Mr. Gré, and we decided to do a dramatical presentation about the story of The Tower of Babel. So we divided us into three workers from Mesopotamia, and we also have God (Mr. Barriga did both roles). Our presentation consisted in a kind of introduction, where the three persons discussed about what to build to be famous and known around the world, and they all agreed that the best option was to build a tower to reach heaven. Then, Mr. Gré and me discussed about language while we "built" the tower, and finally God punished us by changing our languages, because we were ambitious and we wanted to reach heaven by an incorrect way. (The correct way to achieve heaven is by being a good person, according to the Bible).


Personally, what I most liked about our dramatic presentation is that we were able to present the story of The Tower of Babel, but we also combined it with a modern discussion about language (Innate Language vs Learn Language), and viewers seemed to like it. Luckily, we had no problems in our presentation and I think it was smooth and well done, so we are happy for that!

What is Literature?

Novels, manuals, magazines, poems, notebooks... They are all written Language, but which ones are Literature? Some persons make a relation between Literature and high culture written language, like poems or novels; others, relate it to all types written pieces. There are a lot of definitions of Literature, and they all vary. I think that the main problem when trying to tell what is Literature is to define what type of writings are Literature and which ones aren't. Also, can we consider oral expressions part of literature? This can be answered with something called Oral Literature, which involves non-written literature, mainly oral traditions and oral stories.


Here I present some definitions for Literature:

1. "Writings in which expression and form, in connection with ideas of permanent and universal interest, are characteristics or essential features, such as poetry, novels, history, biographies and essays." (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/literature)
2. "Written matter, both fictional and non fictional." 
   (http://thesaurus.com/browse/literature?s=t)

From this entry and on, I will refer to Literature as "A highly developed use of language in that is the stylized manipulation of language for larger effect (purpose) and/or affect (emotional response)" (Taken from Course Companion book, IB).

Debate: Language Theories!

In my old entries I showed some of the theories that try to explain how do humans acquire language. The motion of the debate was "Humans are born with an ability to create language" vs. "Language is a learnt construct like the rules governing a sport". In groups of two or three, we had to defend and argument our points of view in relation with the motion.

In my case, I worked with Mr. Romeu, and we argued that "Humans are born with an ability to create language", against Mr. Eidelstein and Mr. Labra. Good arguments were exposed by both teams, but I think that our best argument was "Humans speak, we all know that. But who created the language that we use? Humans, who else could have created it?" Personally, I think that this argument goes really deep into the language origins, and shows clearly that we, humans, created language.

I really liked the opportunity that we had to debate and I hope we debate again in the future, because it's an awesome way of learning, as both teams make their best to found good arguments.