Critical Reading in Academia and Beyond

Workshop for Postgraduate students presented by Dr Ute Schwaibold

As a critical reader you do far more than just remember the ideas an author shared in his/her paper. You should be able to understand the author’s main idea about, or position on, a topic, see their opinions, and analyse the author’s choices of major and minor supporting details as evidence to back up his/her position. A critical reader can see how ideas fit together and flow to support to build up to the point or argument the author is presenting, and assess whether the argument presented is valid. Regardless of whether you are reading an academic article or a news clip, critical reading empowers you to come to your own conclusions on what the author has written. This workshop will guide you, the reader, on how to recognise an author’s position or opinion and their supporting evidence and to critically evaluate what you read. At the end of this course you should be able to:
- Identify an author’s position/opinion/argument;
- Find the evidence used to support the position/opinion/argument;
- Evaluate the strength of this evidence, and
- Evaluate the credibility of the sources you may find for your own writing. 

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