Advice: critical analysis
Developing your skills to improve your reading , thinking and writing
You may have had feedback in digisoc1 or digisoc2 about the level of critical analysis in your work. At this point you will not have lost many marks, but you will need to develop your skills further to get the best marks in digisoc3.
What does it mean to ‘be critical’?
Being critical in an academic sense is often confused with criticism. Criticism is the act of judging something, or reacting to it negatively. You might criticise someone’s idea by sending them an ‘um, DUH’ meme like the one pictured. This is not the same as using critical reading, thinking and writing skills.
Being critical is different, it is a skill. You might respond to someone’s idea critically by evaluating it and exploring problems, assumptions, and asking questions. This might involve some criticism (although it needn’t), but any criticism would certainly be backed up rather than just a simple, ‘um, DUH’.
For clarity, when we say ‘critical’ we mean the skill; when we say ‘criticism’ we mean simple judgement. Let’s look at a definition of ‘being critical’:
“To be critical means to examine concepts, ideas and arguments from all possible angles, taking an analytical stance to evaluate and constantly question what is being presented to you. It is a means of scratching below the surface to question assumptions and gaps within an argument or idea, while bearing in mind how it fits (or doesn’t fit!) with other sources of evidence and your own existing knowledge.”
[MLE: Being critical, University of Manchester, CC BY-NC 3.0]
There are a few aspects to ‘being critical’, generally including critical reading, critical thinking and critical writing. If you are asked to produce a critical analysis or reflection, you need to use your critical skills in developing the work and it should be clear from your writing that you have done so.
The resources below will help you understand and develop all these skills.
Why is it important to be critical?
Developing critical skills is really key at University and beyond. This has always been true, but think about recent discussions around fake news, some of which we have had in this unit.
- What can we do to avoid falling for fake news?
- How can we help people see the holes in an argument?
- How can journalists rise above fake news?
Read, think and write more critically.
Never before has being critical been so important to the world! It’s also important in UCIL25002.
Let’s look at how you can work on those skills.
How does this relate to assessment?
Because this is relevant to the learning outcomes of the course, you will be assessed on it.
Developing your skills in this area can help you to gain more from this course and perform better in assessment. This will be important in digisoc3 to unlock the middle level for the first marking criterion, you need to attempt some sort of analysis; to unlock the higher levels and marks, you need to be critical.
digisoc3 // marking criterion 1:
Understand the key concepts of a ‘digital society’, the ethics of online information use and the skills needed to be effective and successful digital scholars and citizens. Think critically about information, practice self-reflection and collaborate across disciplines, applying learning to other aspects of academic, personal and professional life
The top three rubric levels for this criterion are:
- [5] an excellent understanding of the themes, showing clear insight and awareness of the issues and a balanced, critical account supported by references to relevant information on the topic
- [4] a good understanding of the themes and an awareness of the issues raised, with a well-reasoned analysis supported by references to relevant information on the topic
- [3] a satisfactory understanding of the themes explored but with limited analysis and/or adequate reference to relevant information on the topic
Where do I start?
First of all, we recommend that you work through Being Critical from My Learning Essentials. It doesn’t take long (10–15 minutes) but it gives you a useful introduction to what being critical means. The resource covers critical reading, writing and thinking, and is useful for any academic study. There’s a downloadable/printable cheat sheet which you might find useful to come back to, to check you are being critical in digisoc3.
Secondly, the Academic Phrasebank has a page on being critical, with sample sentence structures which you can use/modify (no need to reference them), or which might help you think about whether you are being critical, e.g.
The main weakness with this theory is that …
The key problem with this explanation is that …
However, this theory does not fully explain why …
Using sentence structures like this in your head and on the page will help you to read, think and write more critically.
Thirdly in week 9 (25th Mar) of the course we have a skills session “Critically analysing information” led by Nicola Grayson and Kit Lawrence from the Learning Development team. This session will be useful in relation to Digital Society but also areas of your School coursework where you have to apply critical skills.
How can I improve?
The best way to improve is practice. In this case: write, write, write. If you are practising outside of your assessed work, you have nothing to fear.
Try to write about an aspect of Digital Society, using the techniques above; come back to what you have written later and review it using this page and the linked resources as a guide. Think about how you are developing and edit your work or write some more.
When you read other people’s work as research, practise critical reading. When you consider what you want to say, practise critical thinking. When you write it, practise critical writing.
I’m lacking inspiration! What can I write about?
A blank page is intimidating, and it is hard to write when you lack inspiration. Franz Kafka may have tackled this by writing about not being able to write, with hilarious effect.
You may not find his approach very useful here. So, below are some ideas for things you can write which can help you to practise writing online, engage with the course, and give you the opportunity to practise being critical.
It’s up to you how you practise, you don’t have to practice on Medium, and if you do, you don’t have to publish it, but we encourage you to share if you are happy to do so.
Things to write about:
- Use the Mini Missions to practice your critical skills
- Write a detailed comment on a Topic page which you haven’t responded to
- Write a followup response to a Topic page which you responded to already, exploring your or someone’s ideas further or offering a new perspective
- Write a comment on a Topic page analysing something we covered in one of the sessions.
- Find any article on Medium relevant to Digital Society (ask the course tutors if you are lacking inspiration) and write a response to it
- Write a response to another student’s digisoc1 or Mini Mission post
- Write something new based on your digisoc1 or digisoc2 submission (Important: do not edit, delete or unpublished your digisoc1 post before the end of the unit, but feel free to create a new post based on it)
Critical reading, thinking and writing are key academic and life skills which we all need to develop, and it is really useful in your studies; we hope the above is useful and as always we’re here to help if you want further support.
Please email digisoc@manchester.ac.uk with any questions or problems.
