What Are Critical Thinking Skills?

Critical Thinking Skills, a current buzz phrase, are generic skills for the creative and most effective way of solving a problem or evaluating a situation. The most effective way of solving a problem or evaluating a situation. The most effective way of solving a problem is to extract some piece of information or observe something curious from the problem then use one or more of the specific strategies or Critical Thinking Skills (together with basic skills or information you already know) to get to the next step in the problem. This next step will catapult you toward a solution with further use of the specific strategies or thinking skills. These specific strategies will enable you to “process” think rather than just be concerned with the end result, the latter which usually gets you into a fast, rushed, and wrong answer. The Gruber strategies have been shown to make one more comfortable with problem solving and make the process enjoyable. The skills will last a lifetime, and you will develop a passion for problem solving. These Critical Thinking Skills show that conventional “drill and practice” is a waste of time unless the practice is based on these generic thinking skills.
 * 1) Extract or observe something curious.
 * 2) Use specific strategies together with basic skills.

Here's a simple example of how these Critical Thinking Skills can be used in a math problem:

Which is greater, 7 1/7 x 8 1/8 x 6 1/6 or 8 1/8 x 6 1/6 x 7?

Long and tedious way: Multiply 7 1/7 x 8 1/8 x 6 1/6 and compare it with 8 1/8 x 6 1/6 x 7.

Error in doing the problem the “long way”: You don't have to calculate; you just have to compare, so you need a strategy for comparing two quantities.

Critical Thinking Way: 1. Observe: There is a common 8 1/8 and 6 1/6 Here's a simple example of how Critical Thinking Skills can be used for a Verbal problem:
 * 1) Use Strategy: Since both 8 1/8 and 6 1/6 are just weighting factors, like the same quantities on both sides of a balance scale, just cancel them from both multiplied quantities above.
 * 2) You are then left comparing 7 1/7 with 7, so the first quantity, 7 1/7 is greater. Thus 7 1/7 x 8 1/8 x 6 1/6 is greater than 8 1/8 x 6 1/6 x 7.

If you see a word such as DELUDE in a sentence or in a reading passage, you can assume that the word DELUDE is negative and probably means “taking away from something” or “distracting,” since the prefix DE means “away from” and thus has a negative connotation. Although you may not get the exact meaning of the word (in this case the meaning is to “deceive” or “mislead”), you can see how the word may be used in the context of the sentence it appears in, and thus get the flavor or feeling of the sentence, paragraph, or sentence completion. I have researched and developed more than 50 prefixes and roots (presented on this site) that can let you make use of this context strategy.

Notice that the Critical Thinking approach gives you a fail-safe and exact way to the solution without superficially trying to solve the problem or merely guessing at it. This site contains all the Critical Thinking Strategies you need to know for the SAT test.

'''Dr. Gruber has researched hundreds of SAT tests (thousands of SAT questions) and documented 40 Critical Thinking Strategies (all found in this book) coursing through every test. These strategies can be used for any Math, Verbal, or Logical Reasoning problem.'''

In short, you can learn how to solve a specific problem and thus find how to answer that specific problem, or you can learn a powerful strategy that will enable you to answer hundreds of problems.