Purpose of Each Key Characteristic of Academic Writing (Essay Sample)

CRITICAL THINKING IN ACADEMIC WRITING
Name
Course
Date
Introduction
Critical thinking is the key to successful academic writing. It is evidence through argumentation through the concept of critical thinking is naturally complex. There are various factors which influence critical writing such as the cultural background of the student. Confucius-heritage cultures are recognized as barriers to the acquiring of analytical and critical skills. There are certain issues, which express insufficient critical thinking in academic writing such as lack of an uncertain argument, inadequate knowledge on the subject and problematic matter regarding the genre of the essay such as the assessment demands and authorial voice. Argumentation in critical thinking is followed by evaluation and analysis of the information.
The academic institutions play a vital role in instilling the critical and analytical skills through explaining and teaching the importance of developing the skills. When the institutions fail to carry out their duty, the students from the institutions demonstrates a lack of critical thinking skills in their academic work. Critical thinking can be described as a clear presentation of an individual’s evidence and argumentation which leads to their conclusion; precise and confident refusal of other people's conclusions before an evaluation of one’s evidence is provided; an explanation of why the individuals is against other authors conclusion; and recognizing the limitation of the authors argument, evidence and conclusion.[Cumming, Alister. 2006. Goals for academic writing: ESL students and their instructors. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Pub. Co.]
Purpose of Each Key Characteristic of Academic Writing
The formal nature of critical thinking can be described as a cognitive skill, which is associated with a rational judgment which is defined as reflexive skepticism, an educational cognate of rationality and critical self-reflection. It is related to reasoning which is based on skills such as selection of the data one views as correct, evaluating it, analyzing, reflecting, questioning, inference and judging. A student is expected to identify an issue and assumptions associated with it, make necessary relations, correct inferences and come up with conclusions.[Hogsette, David S. 2009. Writing that makes sense: critical thinking in college composition. Eugene, Or: Resource publication.]
The objective perspective of critical thinking is to explain the student’s point of view. When referring to certain writing, the author has a different idea, which the student can support or be against, arguing the reasons for taking that side. The objective helps determine what the students feel about the writing and the conclusions they deduce. The learner is expected to come up with some questions, formulate them clearly in a way that another person can understand the work. Think open-mindedly, which offering solutions to the raised questions and support them with enough data, which will express a literature understanding.[Vyncke, Michelle. 2012. The concept and practice of critical thinking in academic writing: an investigation of international students' perceptions and writing experiences.]
Critical engagement in critical thinking shows that the student can argue their points from their point of view and in a way that another person can understand the work. Critical engaging is expressed by clarity of the information offered, accuracy concerning the writing, which was being referred to. Precision has to be part of the writing, and the data should be relevant. Depth and breadth of the information are necessary to express adequate possession of literature in association to the topic. The data should logic and fair depending on the subject of discussion.
Various learners are from different backgrounds. They express differently in critical thinking depending on their cultures and the institutions they attended. A good argumentation should not be biased depending on one’s culture; it should be wide covering all the general things, thus being able to respond to wider scholarship’s claims. When certain information is based on the writer’s beliefs, it becomes unreliable since other readers may not be having enough information of the beliefs and thus might not understand the objective of the literature.
References in critical thinking are used to support the literature the student has used. The data has to be attained from other reliable sources, and the references help compare the students and authors ideas.[Paul, Richard, and Linda Elder. 2013. Critical thinking: tools for taking charge of your professional and personal life. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education. http://proquest.safaribooksonline.com/?fpi=9780133115703.]
Critical thinking is usually persuasive in nature. An individual presents a problem to the audience, uses literature to argue and explain the solution to the readers. The way the argument is used is used to persuade the people why the solution offered is best for the problem provided.
The Role of Critical Thinking in Developing These Characteristics
Critical thinking develops the formal nature characteristics through the skills which are involved in explaining the attribute. Depth and breadth are required in nature, where through critical thinking; the student is expected to think beyond the literature they are using. They have to compare different literature to come up with the required information, which will provide a coherent argument and present their ideas in a clear and precise way.
A certain literature may be offering a single objective, which the author had in mind. When a student is thinking critically, they can be able to include more objectives to the literature offered. Looking at the data in different ways and analyzing it in more than one approach will help come up with more objectives, thus expanding the work. Critical thinking is a method to look deeply to certain information, separate it into different topics and analyze each critically.
Critical engagement describes various skills, which are developed through critical thinking. Critiquing the available information is the first skill where the learner offers different judgments of the literature review, which is done through the clear reasoning of the different judgments. Data should be analyzed and synthesized, evaluated and reflected upon before any conclusions are deduced. The presentation is anticipated to be clear which will explain the student’s point of view and the reasoning.[Mat Daud, Nor Shidrah Binti. 2011. Developing critical thinking skills in tertiary academic writing through the use of an instructional rubric for peer evaluation: a thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of Canterbury.]
Critical thinking responds to wider scholarship claims where students from different backgrounds, cultures and academic institutions express different skills in critical engagement. There are some open cultures where the students can learn from others thus developing the analytical skills, which those students confined to a single background are poor in presenting an argument. Academic institutions have the role of explaining the importance of critical thinking to their students and even provide chances for the student to develop the skills. When the school is ignorant of the skills, so are the students from that particular institution.[Ruggiero, Vincent Ryan. 2003. Beyond feelings: a guide to critical thinking. Boston, Mass: McGraw-Hill.]
The deeper the student has to dig for information to try and prove their point, the more the references are required. An argument has to be reliable, and it is provided through data, which has already been researched on by other authors. The more the recent the data, the more the reliable it is for critical analysis. References are important as they show the date, which the data was researched on to show that it is current and not outdated. They show the authors as well, which helps compare the author's point of view and conclusion, and the difference with the student's r...