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Laura Perez

Dr. Smith

ENGL 101 2COB

June 8, 2017

How Does Reading and Writing Helps to Think Critical?

College students are struggling graduating from college with a critical way of thinking.

The students are not studying and reading the right amount of time that they need in order to

synthesize or to put ideas together which means that they are not preparing themselves enough

for the outside world. In The Chronicle of Higher Education by David Glenn, statistics show

that 36 percent of collegiate students do not improve their reading and writing skills throughout

their college years. One reason why students are not doing better is because professors are not

giving students enough assignments that will help them improve or gain reading and writing

skills. In order to improve their reading and writing skill, professors should give more reading

and writing assignments that would give students a way to gain critical thinking skills and

succeed in their studies.

Students do better in their first year than in their senior year of college. According to

The Chronicle of Higher Education article by Glenn, American college seniors were better in

their first semester at writing and reasoning task than they were in their senior semester. This is

because when students go to college they do better because they put a lot of interest in their

classes and as time is going they only want to do little work and not complicate or stress their

lives. A study in the same article says that students were asked to do an essay test that measures

reasoning and writing skills in which Thirty-six percent of the students saw no statistically

significant gains in their CLA scores between their freshmen and senior year. Glenn. The author
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is showing that the students were not developing their skills between their freshmen and senior

year instead; students were still stuck in their way to think critical when it comes to do develop

an essay paper.

College students are not spending the right amount of time in reading and writing papers

for their classes. A study in The Chronicle of Higher Education article, Glenn shows how

students slightly spend more than 12 hours per week to study because their courses are not

demanding more time. In their writing intensive course theyre only writing 20 or more pages for

one semester and only 40 pages per week in the reading intensive courses. One can conclude that

12 hours is not enough time for college students to spend in their intensive course because they

should at least spend two hours per each hour they spend in a class in order to be successful in

the course.

Collegiate students can develop their reading and writing skills by working alone in their

assignments. In the words of (George D. Kuh, a founding director of the Center for

Postsecondary Research at Indiana University at Bloomington) he stated in The Chronicle of

Higher Education article that studying alone is a good strategy for many students but for the

students that have a weaker high school preparations is better to be in a collaborative learning

This means that students do not concentrate the way they should when they are in groups

because they get distracted talking to each other about things that are not related to what they are

doing, watching TV, eating snacks, etc. For example, when I was in High School, the teachers

always wanted us (my classmates and me) to work in groups, sometimes it was good because we

explained to each other the tasks and helps everyone understand the assignments. On the other

hand, in every group there is always students who does not want to help with the assignments in

the groups and some of them ended up double tasking in the projects, therefore working alone is
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better because one does the work that needs to be done and develop the reasoning and writing

skills better to have a critical thinking.

Professors should give the students some reading assignments so that they increase their

reading and reasoning skills. According to the article Are College Lectures Unfair-The New

York Times by Annie Murphy Paul, she stated that The instructors may pose questions about

the weeks reading, for example, and require students to answer the questions online, for a grade,

before coming to class this shows that in order to make sure the students are doing their

readings and that they are understanding the material, professors should give some quizzes or to

have a discussion with the students in what the reading was about because that will encourage

them to do their assignments and they will have to do their best to comprehend the reading.

Study before going to class is a good way to improve critical thinking because one gets use to

read every day so the skill develop little by little until is part of the person.

Some people think that reading and writing is not that much important for students to

learn. Based on the article The Sun- Why Schools Dont Educate by John Taylor Gatto, he

stated that In the United States almost nobody who reads and writes gets much respect. We are

in a land of talkers. This shows that people only care about how one talk in public and they are

a lot of people who think that writing doesnt matter. However, in people resumes the writing

matters a lot because that is a way to see the potential of a person.

In conclusion, professors should give students more reading and writing assignments in

order to develop and gain critical thinking because that way they will do better in their essay

papers and their writing will give them better jobs and opportunities. Students reasoning skills

will improve if the professors encourage them to read by giving them reading assignments and at
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the end of the reading, give them a quiz based on what they have read. Critical thinking is an

important skill that college students should have because that way students can be successful.
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Cited Page

Glenn, David. "New Book Lays Failure to Learn on Colleges' Doorsteps." The Chronicle of

Higher Education. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 18 Jan. 2011.

Paul, Annie Murphy. "Are College Lectures Unfair?" The New York Times. The New York

Times, 12 Sept. 2015.