Critical Thinking: The Sponge Method

Have you ever wondered what critical thinking is and how it can help you grow as a student? Well, critical reading is a more in-depth style of reading. For example, when someone reads critically, they 're analyzing and evaluating the text. People who use critical reading always ask questions about the text so they can get a better understanding about what they 're reading. Critical reading is also a vast part of what we do every day throughout our life. For example, we use critical reading skills in order to understand if an article has reliable information. When we look for reliable information, we are making sure that the author is qualified and knows what he or she is writing about. This is important because I always look for factual information …show more content…
One of these styles is the sponge method. In the sponge method, a person absorbs information to gain knowledge. The knowledge people gain in the sponge method stands as a foundation for more complicated thoughts. The sponge method is very useful for grasping basic concepts that someone would want to later develop. Although the sponge method seems like a great tool it’s not the perfect thinking style. The other thinking style is the panning for gold method. In the panning for gold method a person dives deep into what they are reading so that they can gain knowledge. When people use the panning for gold method they ask questions about the reading and they critically analyze the text. This method is great because it helps people think a lot more about what they are reading. According to Browne “His intent is to critically evaluate the material and formulate personal conclusions based on the evaluation”. This shows how panning for gold helps people dive deeper into what they are reading because they think a lot more critically about their reading. The panning for gold method also has people thinking about the most important parts of a text compared to the sponge method which only gives us a brief analysis of the text. Both the sponge method and the panning for gold method are great methods within critical reading and both of these methods do help people better analyze …show more content…
For example, I have had a lot of essays where the panning for gold method played a big part in what ideas I had. Using the panning for gold method I would dive deeper into the readings so that I can find a lot more information about the things I was going to write about. I believe the panning for gold method plays a big part in college reading because it makes people better critical