Critical Reading (Evaluation)
of An Article, Chapter, or Book  

Critical reading involves three types of reading:

• A sympathetic reading that tries to understand as much as possible how the author's reasons and evidence support his or her conclusion.

• A skeptical reading that raises as many critical questions as possible about how the author's reasons and evidence support his or her conclusion.  For a skeptical reading to be successful, it is essential to play the devil's advocate and consider whether alternate arguments are more convincing..

• A synthetic reading of the sympathetic and skeptical readings in order to evaulate the overall strengths and weaknesses of the author's argument.

Some Critical Reading steps:

I.  What are the author's conclusion or conclusions? 

Read and reread the entire article:

• Look for the conclusion normally near the beginning and the end of the article, chapter, or book, but you often have to take into account both.

• Choose a conclusion that accounts for all of the reasons and evidence in the text.

II.  What are the most general logical reasons and evidence that the author gives to support his or her conclusion?

• logical reasons use logic to support the conclusion.  

• General logical reasons do not repeat each other.  Each adds a new piece to the puzzle.  Look over the reasons you find and combine those that make the same argument but in different ways so as to get at the most general reasons.

• Evidence is a descriptive statement of what someone has observed, experienced, or calculated.  When stated in support of a conclusion, evidence implies reasons that explain this support logically.  You should figure out and state the logic of why evidence supports a conclusion.

III.  Evaluate sympathetically and skeptically how well the author's reasons and evidence support his or her conclusion, including the extent to which this support is strong sense (takes fully into account more than one side).

A.  Make sure that the author has provided all of the reasons and evidence necessary to support his or her conclusion.  In order find omitted reasons or evidence, you might:

• just ask yourself whether the argument needs more evidence to support its reasons and conclusion, and more reasons to support its argument. 
• try looking at the conclusion and blinding yourself to the author's reasons.  Then ask yourself what reasons and evidence you think the author should have provided in order to fully support his or her conclusion.  Then check and see if the author has given these.  
• Explain why any missing reasons or evidence weaken or contradict the conclusion.

B. Evaluate the strengths as well as the weaknesses of the reasons and evidence, their credibility and the extent to which they give logical support to the conclusion.

1. Evaluate whether each reason and evidence is, in itself, logically justified and/or based on a credible source.  For evidence, evaluate its type (systematic studies are preferable), quality, and relevance in order to evaluate the quality of the writer's research. 
2. Explain and illustrate why each reason or evidence logically supports the conclusion. In order to explain one reason or evidence you will generally have to take into account all of the reasons.
3. Look for any logical ambiguities, questionable assumptions, or fallacies (hasty generalizations, ad hominem, etc.) in the reasoning.
4. Explain how suspect sources, ambiguities, fallacies, etc. weaken the author's support for his or her conclusion.  

C.  Make sure that key terms, that are central for the argument, are defined correctly (consult a dictionary).  If they are not, explain how this inaccurate definition affects the strength of the author's conclusion. 

D.  Evaluate whether the author makes a strong-sense argument, i.e. avoids a one-sided or either/or polemical argument:

1.      Look for unjustified descriptive or value assumptions that author has not clarified and that may bias the argument.  State what these assumptions are and explain how they weaken the argument or make it polemical (one-sided and/or either/or).

2.      Look for alternate conclusions and/or causes that you or others find persuasive.

•  If the author does discuss alternative arguments, explain the reasons that he or she gives for rejecting these alternative arguments.

•  If the author does not discuss alternative arguments:
      a. figure out whether the author's  reasons and evidence support only the author's conclusion or whether they could be used to support one or some of these alternate conclusions.  State what these alternate conclusions are.
      b. If the conclusion is a cause (X causes Y), then consider other possible causes for the same situation and evaluate whether one cause is sufficient to explain the situation or whether multiple causes might be responsible.
      c. In order to evaluate alternate conclusions and causes, think out and research the reasons and evidence that are used to support the alternate conclusions you find.  
      d.  Explain how the author might have made a more strong-sense and nuanced argument if he had integrated the strengths of alternate arguments into his argument and made clear why he rejected the weaknesses of alternate arguments.