Prerequisites: WRCM 101, WRCM 102 . : This course explores issues about the nature and techniques of critical thought, viewed as a way to establish a reliable basis for our claims, beliefs, and attitudes about the world. We plan to explore multiple perspectives, placing established facts, theories, and practices in tension with alternatives to see how could be otherwise. Views about observation and interpretation, reasoning and inference, valuing and judging, and the production of knowledge in its social context are considered. Special attention is given to translating what is learned into strategies, materials, and interventions for use in students' own academic and professional settings. Furthermore, the students will learn reading strategies to understand and retain information, to understand the organization of reading passages, and strategies for learning and retaining vocabulary. Building on these basic strategies, students will develop skills to critically analyze texts. In addition, students will practice and develop paraphrasing and summarizing skills. Students will receive ongoing feedback on their assignments throughout the course. This course is specifically designed to improve students’ critical reading and thinking skills, increase analytical, inferential and evaluative comprehension, expand vocabulary skills, and employ effective study strategies for use across academic disciplines. All in all, this course is a gift – the chance to be open – open ¬ended in design, open to process, open to other perspectives, open to changing the student’s ideas, and open to sharing. Of course this means it’s risky too – the students won’t always know when they’re coming from or where they are going – they might think they aren’t sufficiently grounded by the course. But they have the freedom to change that – and being on the other side of it now, I see it works out effectively. The attention to process provides the students the tools to grow and by the end they’re riding the wave of their earlier work
- Teacher: Sadiqa Maqbool