Critical and Creative Thinking - Essay Example

After studying the course on critical and creative thinking, I would say my perspective on this topic completely changed and I am now viewing this as one of the crucial subjects in one's life. It has greatly helped me to be able to think through situations more creatively and critically, which at the end of the day has enabled me to make better decisions than before. Better decisions greatly improve the quality of life of a person because an individual lives his or her decisions (Brodin, 2019). Unless one through a situation critically and creatively, the chance of making a poor decision is very high.

Under this study, I was able to deeply learn linguistic analysis. This, at the end of the day, greatly helped me to develop my critical thinking skills because I was able to understand the ways through which language conveys ideas and feelings through means such as denotation and connotation. Understanding that words are very crucial in general life, that they help us name our experiences, convey our feelings and that words also name our thoughts was actually the beginning of the development of my critical thinking because unless one has these words right, then thinking through the situations would be very difficult (Latta et al. 2017). I was also able to understand the different ways through which language conveys ideas and feelings through denotation and connotation. Learning about these two words helped me to understand there is more in a word than its dictionary meaning and that for one to have e better understanding of the word, they need to also understand its connotation which is basically the associations of thought and feeling it evokes in us as human beings.

This course also greatly helped me to understand more about the literal meaning and conversational implicature in languages, and this formed a basis for me improving in my critical thinking skills. My approach for words has not just been superficial anymore, but I now go the extra mile of checking their literal meaning. When one understands the literal meanings assigned to words, he or she is able to think critically through a situation or a statement because a statement can sometimes carry a deeper meaning that is just hidden in words (Latta et al. 2017). The context of a conversation has also helped me to think critically, especially after understanding conversational implicature. Context includes the general background of expression and for one to fully understand a situation critically, there is always a great need to understand the context of that situation or that expression. One needs to analyze things such as the identity of the speaker, occasion, audience and culture and these are basically some of the things that have been covered in this course that have helped to improve my critical thinking skills. After studying the critical analysis of texts, my understanding of texts drastically improved. I was able to learn that for one to understand a passage, text or expression deeper and better, there is a great need to isolate and look closely at its parts. The beginning strategy for this is to focus on one element at a time and this will give one an opportunity to understand the context and the meaning even better and even helps one to think critically because it is easy to think through situations when they are in divided into smaller and simpler parts than when they are viewed generally as a whole with many hidden things in it.

At the end of this study, I was able to think more critically because my understanding of different language traps and how they appear in our daily lives greatly increased. Under the topic of linguistic pitfalls, I was able to understand in a deeper way the different language traps that we fall into that hinder our critical thinking. Language traps basically cause misunderstanding and confusion and anytime there is any form of misunderstanding and confusion, it is very difficult to think critically. I was therefore able to understand that as a critical thinker, I need to avoid different language traps that exist and the first step is to be able to accurately determine these language traps in our daily lives such as vagueness, ambiguity, stock sense and euphemism. When there is a vagueness in expression, it greatly affects critical thinking because there is no enough information. When there is good communication, which is characterized by enough information on what is being presented, critical thinking becomes easy (Paul & Elder, 2019). This course was therefore very useful in developing my critical thinking skills because I was able to learn that for me to be able to effectively think critically, I need to be in a position where I am free from all the language traps. Studying the different linguistic problems under this course also helped me to develop critical thinking skills because I was able to develop the art of noting any linguistic problem that will hinder me from exercising my critical thinking skills fully. One of the ways to deal with a problem is to know how it appears in daily life. Also, knowing the relationship between language traps and linguistic traps led me to understand it is better to avoid language traps first because they are the ones that mostly lead to linguistic problems. The ability to identify these linguistic problems such as meaning obscurity, conceptual deflection and vacuous meaning greatly enhanced my ability to avoid them since one of the first steps to avoiding a problem is to, first of all, know the problem.

This course helped me understand formal logic and informal logic. Understanding of these two forms of logic greatly helps to improve one's ability to think creatively and critically. One of the important skills that one needs to learn in linguistics is the propositions and deductive reasoning by both analysis and abstraction (Paul & Elder, 2019). In formal logic, I was able to develop my skills by developing logic that can assess arguments that occur in natural language. Critical thinking involves logical reasoning, an art that I greatly acquired. My ability to look at the content in an argument and see if there are any fallacies, both formal and informal, grew to a remarkable extent as I went through this course. At the end of this study I was able to understand more the importance of fallacy and how it greatly helps one in critical and creative thinking—my skills in developing valid and not faulty reasons or moves whenever I am constructing an argument greatly increased. After the end of the study, I was able to understand that a fallacious argument may be deceptive by appearing to be better than it really is and this is an understanding that one needs to have if he or she will be a creative and a critical thinker.

This course also helped me view creativity in a completely different angle as I used before. Understanding the term creativity provided the first step for me to be creative. Understanding that creativity is an applied imagination motivated me to put into use and into application most of my imaginations that I would say just laid into waste. My creative thinking, therefore, greatly improved after the study and I was able to be more innovative. Creative thinking is also characterized by recognizing different strategies that can be used to produce creative results (Setiawan et al. 2018). Throughout this study, my ability to recognize these strategies greatly increased. My skills to identify different mental hindrances that prevent people from thinking creatively also improved to a great extent. I would say at the end of it all, I was able to filter all these mental locks and apply several positive attitudes. One needs to have a positive attitude to be a creative thinker and this is one of the important things that I acquired in this study.

Also, at the end of this course, I was able to understand the heuristic technique that greatly helped me improve my problem solving, discovery and learning that employs practical methods. Improved problem-solving abilities show a certain level of increase in the level of creative thinking skills. This is because most of the problems require creativity for them to be solved (Setiawan et al. 2018). The increased use of heuristics in this course increased my creativity greatly.

In conclusion, this course greatly contributed to the development of both my critical and creative thinking skills. For one's creative thinking and critical skills, there is a great need to be subjected through this course and topics such as linguistic analysis, linguistic pitfalls, basic logic concepts, Informal fallacies, the heuristic of creative thinking and the different lateral thinking techniques. This course greatly helped me to view this topic from a totally different angle, which has been the basis of me developing my skills.