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Chapter 2 Critical Thinking and Effective Writing Skills for the Professional Critical Thinking Skills “characterized by careful and exact evaluation and judgment”  Purposeful, goal-oriented, and creative  A process of understanding how thinking and learning work.  Critical Thinking skills (contd.)  Higher order skills  Analysis- breaking ideas into component parts  Synthesis – connection among different components to derive relationships that tie the parts of the answer together  Critical assessment – examination of the conclusions reached for sound logical reasoning. Critical Thinking Skills (contd.)  Includes  Recognizing any explanatory relations among statements  Recognizing the structure of arguments (premises, implicit assumptions, and conclusions)  Assessing consistency or inconsistency, equivalence among statements, and logical implications  Formulation and identifying deductively and inductively, justified conclusions based on available Levels of Thinking Bloom’s taxonomy-six levels, knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation.  Higher order knowledge occurs when using higher order skills  One must be able to perform lower level skills before moving up  Levels of Thinking (contd.)       Bloom’s Taxonomy 1. Knowledge – recall 2. Comprehension – grasping material 3. Application – use in new situation 4. Analysis – breaks down into components 5. Synthesis – puts parts into new form. 8 Elements of Reasoning Purpose  Issue  Informatio n  Concepts  Assumptio ns  Interpretat ion  Implicatio ns  Conclusion  Effective Writing Skills Know your Audience – supervisor, shareholder, management, government agency, other.  “in accounting and other professions, we must have strong technical skills. But if we cannot communicate what we know, the value of the technical  AICPA’s 6 Characteristics of Effective Writing for the CPA Exam Coherent organization  Conciseness  Clarity  Use of standard English  Responsiveness to the requirements of the questions  Appropriateness for the reader.  SEC’s Plain English Concept’s Use the active voice  Use short sentences  Definite, concrete, everyday language  Tabular presentation  Limit jargon  No double negatives  Effective Client Letters and e-mails Oral communication is used if a quick response is needed or if there is a privacy issue  Written communication is normally used if documentation is needed. 