The Importance Of Critical Thinking Skills

Chapter 7 focuses on the importance of finding the appropriate information to support your ideas and specifically how to do so. Finding the appropriate information to support your ideas are in fact the most important step in the speechmaking process. It lays the foundation of a speech and determines the outcome along with other aspects of public speaking such as thinking through the process of planning, presenting, and evaluating effectively. “Gathering effective supporting materials is part of the canon the ancient Romans called invention” (Jaffe p110). Selecting the best information requires critical thinking skills as well as the typically requirement of finding 5 to 7 sources (Jaffe p110). Critical thinking is crucial to the process of planning, presenting, and evaluating effective speeches. Critical thinking is simply making reasoned judgements that are logical and well thought out. Through developing critical skills, one is able to “analyze information, sort through persuasive appeals, discriminate faulty arguments from valid …show more content…
“Empirical facts are data that can be verified by observation, and established facts are data that are consistently validated by many observers” (Jaffe p136). Such sources used are to be factual simply because you supposed to be stating truth to support your opinion. Using examples are another way to support your evidence. Using examples allows the reader to view the topic from a different perspective. Examples can be specific illustrations, short, long, real or hypothetical (Jaffe p139). Last, but certainly not least, the use of visual evidence can also be used. Through visual evidence, the reader is able to see for themselves what you are trying to prove. In fact, there are people who are visual learners. They are only able to comprehend something if they see it. All of things are to be kept in mind when choosing supporting