Some effective ways of developing analytical skills.
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Some effective ways of developing analytical skills

EG Aleeva - VSOSH #1

        In our day-to-day life whether official, personal or social, we have to deal with complications. Some situations are easy to handle with but others are complex. This is where our Analytical Skills help us. The prime purpose for the Analysis of any given situation is to get to know the root causes of the issue, to forecast the impact and to plan corrective or preventive actions strategy. So, basically, analytical skills give us an opportunity to visualize a given situation, task, project or issue from several angles in order to breakdown it into smaller steps, consider the weight of each option. While doing your analysis you can consider the difference between urgent and important things. Analytical thinking skills help us gather information, articulate, visualize and solve complex problems. Besides, teaching students how to understand their own brains, how their thoughts, beliefs, and perceptions are formed, shaped, and sometimes distorted, would be the most important aspect of teaching analytical thinking.

       Basically, analytical thinking is considered as a part of critical thinking. Some people make the assumption that analytical thinking and critical thinking are one and the same. That is not actually true. Contemporary life shows that analytical thinking skills are required more and more. We live in the world of double standards, in an artificial world and see the world through the looking glass as depicted in the novel “Alice in Wonderland”.  I think, there is a need to distinguish between analytical and critical thinking.

       When you think critically, you make the decision personalizing the problem. Once you are given information, you evaluate the data and determine how it should be best interpreted for you. You make conclusions regarding your unique perception of the information. Moreover, you combine new information with your current knowledge of the world in order to make the most accurate assessment you can make. You start to look into other pieces of data that could be relevant. In addition, critical thinking takes facts and uses them to form an opinion or a belief.

        As for analytical thinking, you use it to break down a series of complex bits of information. You take thinks step-by-step to develop an overall conclusion, answer or solution. You look at something through different points of view with the objective to create a cause and an effect.

      So, critical thinking is more of your opinion-based style of thinking. Analytical skills lead you to have a more focus and streamlined approach to solution finding. When you have to find a complex-problem solution or diplomatic way of solving the problem, you would use your analytical skills. If we try to find words that are connected with analysis we can find such words as review, evaluation, test, examination, exploration. It refers to an active learning.

       Analytical skills can be developed with time and consistent practice. Like a muscle, the more you use it, the stronger it gets. There are some effective ways of developing analytical skills. To have good analytical skills we should read a lot to deal with a great source of information and do lots of practice in finding cause and effect relations. Another excellent option is to build mathematical skills. Calculus, algebra and statistics all make use of logic and analysis. How can we use it in our lessons? We can give some numbers orally. (I can write them on the board). What do you think they mean? 17/08, 16, 0.  Let’s pay attention to the steps you or our students do. We get the information, start to analyze, to find connections between the numbers. So, the answer is date/ sum/ multiplication. Then you can start working with dates, days of the week and grammar asking questions: «What date/day is it today? What date/day was yesterday? What date/day will be tomorrow? The variants of the task can be different. Another good way is working with the number of pages. Most of our students don’t like when we say “open your books at page…” If you do it using mathematical calculus, their attention wakes up. So, it’s good for practicing pronunciation, grammar and sentence building, for catching attention.

       “I see, I watch, I feel” is very effective. Try to pay attention observing everything around you. If you see a cat, try to describe it paying attention to details such as size, color, habits. Determine what it is doing, and then ask yourself why it is doing that. Write down your observations.  The best way of practicing is Think-Say-Write. It’s good for warming up, it may be a creative hometask and it’s an effective way of developing language skills. 

       We can use “Sorting and Grouping Exercises”. Categorizing objects on the basis of fixed criteria is a good exercise for developing analytical thinking. Give the students a list of different things or names; say a list of animals and ask them to group the animals in various ways. In case of animals, it could be habitat, size, color or even number of letters in their names. You can give them a list of names of places or a list of numbers and ask the students to sort them into a certain number of groups based on various criteria. The grouping criteria will depend on what included in the list.

       “Compare and Contrast Exercises” can be good for developing critical and analytical thinking skills. Give two things for comparison: two music genres or two movie names, and ask which one they would recommend listening or watching and why. You can give them sets of things that have something in common; one of them is odd and ask them to point out what is common to them. For example: September, April, November, January, June. Now anyone knows what is common to these, they are names of months. All of them have 30 days except January.

       “Socratic Thinking Exercises”. Comment on the following statement. Do you agree or disagree with the statement. Use the following plan: -make an introduction (state the problem); -give arguments “for”; -give arguments “against”; -draw a conclusion based on the given arguments. Ask the students to give their views on the subject and then give them a set of questions like these: “Explain your viewpoint on the subject. Why do you think so? Are there examples that support your point of view? What is the counter-argument to what you think? How would you defend your point of view?
What made you form this opinion?”

     “Sample Scenarios”:

-Imagine you have just 5 years of your life left. What would you do with the time you have?
-Imagine you were born in the 18th century. What would life be like?

-Give 10 uses of a pen other than writing.
-Other than storage, in what different ways can a bottle be used?

-If you were able to go back in time and change one thing in the past, what would it be and why?
-If you were a non-living thing, what would you want to be? Why?

    Students may learn how to provide correct answers while not learning appropriate reasoning, analytical skills. Teaching and using of analytical skills require a dedicated effort. So, there might be a rule: Tasks are not for giving answers, Tasks are for analytical work. Do lexical and grammar exercises using 3 steps.

1st Step - Find the key word/ phrase.

2nd Step - Analyze the situation using the rules.

    3d Step - Give the answer.

     Analyzing of wrong answers is an effective way of developing analytical thinking skills but it needs much more time.

      If we want our students to become good thinkers, reasoners, we need to give them clear examples of simple cases and lots and lots of practice analyzing them. The work on finding effective ways on developing analytical thinking skills is currently ongoing. I think we should pay attention to:

-how analytical skills are developed in a system of education;

-how students develop their critical and analytical thinking skills;

-how critical and analytical thinking skills should be taught and developed;

-how teaching techniques contribute to the development of analytical skills.

       Contemporary students think, learn and process information in different ways. As a result, new mechanisms for teaching and assessing may be required to develop their analytical thinking skills.

 Information resources.

1. Analytic reasoning - Wikipedia
2. Analytical Thinking and Critical Thinking - The Peak Performance Center
3. Analytical Thinking: Why You Need It and How to Get Better - Udemy Blog
4. Socratic Questioning in Psychology: Examples and Techniques (positivepsychology.com)