BOOK REVIEW
Book Title: Smart Thinking: Skills for Critical Understanding and Writing

Book Author: Matthew Allen

Student: Đặng Tuấn Linh (16/02/2004) - 2212140045


Summary:
This book focuses on improving critical thinking skills in reading and writing, thus it helps us
understand and practice the way how to think critically, through giving definitions, examples,
methods. and exercises. As a result, we can be more aware of what we are reading or listening;
gain a deeper understanding of the reasoning process; and have the right approach to argue
effectively and achieve what we want.
To be more detailed, reading this book allows you to gain an insight into this complex world; to
conceive general and important information; to comprehend other people's idea; to
understand how to analyze and express your thoughts; to better communicate, illustrate,
categorize and structure your ideas; to adapt your ideas to your audience and persuade them;
to evaluate, make decisions, address problems and predict the future based on your
knowledge and experiences.
Many people nowadays do not pay much attention to think about the reasoning process, which
may lead to misunderstanding and improper responding. By reading this book, you will know
how to make well-formed and well-founded claims, and to become more careful about the
ideas you transfer, so as to improve your thinking skills and to deal with your issues more
efficiently.

Main Content:
Chapter 1: Smart Thinking
What is smart thinking: It is about using knowledge to analyse information to acquire what
we need.
How do we study smart thinking: To think about thinking process with the right attitude.

Why do we need to “think smart”: Because it is a very necessary skill that is extremely
helpful in your daily life.
Chapter 2: Claims: The Key Elements of Reasoning
Understand language: Claims are the main parts of reasoning. Language allows us to make
claims about the world.
Understand more about these claims will affect how we use them in reasoning.
How claims function differently, as premises or as conclusions, depends on the way we
use them. The conclusion is what you are explaining or arguing for, while premises help you
reach that conclusion.
Chapter 3: Linking: The Key Process in Reasoning
Links between claims: Evidence of the linking process and the problem of understanding
linkages.
The analytical structure of reasoning: Promoting the analytical structure and telling what
that structure format can offer: a better way to show how the exact claims being made
and the ways in which they relate to one another.
Learning more about the analytical structure: The analytical structure behind narrative
flow is a tool to comprehend other people's reasoning.
Chapter 4: Understanding the Links between Claims
Dependent premises: The reason why premises mostly work with other premises in
providing reasons for a conclusion. In the analytical structure, what we think of as 'a
reason' may require many claims to express all its complexities. These claims add together
to form a chain of dependent premises.
Special functions of premises: Discovering the way how a premise can link a group of them
to the conclusions, and how a premise can clarify a definition, making other premises
understandable.


The link from premises to conclusion: Learning the way how links are made between
premises and conclusions to gain an insight into the process of making premises to
support a conclusion.

Chapter 5: More Effective Reasoning I: Better Claims
Well-formed claims: Showing how to write clear claims and understand the main
characteristics of claims
Well-founded claims: Telling about the 'true' claims, the claims whose veracity is not in
question, the claims supported by authority and the claims supported by reasoning.
Chapter 6: More Effective Reasoning II: Better Links
Effective use of dependent premises: Making effective reasoning requires making out
the links between dependent premises. Carefully expanding our 'reasons' into a
completed chain of premises ensures that no premises remain 'implied'.
Relevance: How relevant premises provide information that does actually bear on the
conclusion, while irrelevant premises can not.
Strength of support: As we saw with well-founded claims, the assessment of the
audience’s expectations and other contextual problems plays an important role in
ensuring our reasoning's effectiveness.
Chapter 7: What Kinds of Reasoning are There?
Deductive and inductive reasoning: Checking the difference between deductive and
inductive reasoning, a popular misunderstood difference.
Categorical and propositional logic: Showing the ideal categories by which we can
define and classify the innumerable things in the world into a regular pattern or order.
Five types of reasoning: Causal reasoning, Reasoning from generalization, Reasoning
from specific cases, Reasoning from analogy and Reasoning from terms
Chapter 8: Research, Reasoning, and Analysis
Reasoning depends totally on knowledge, as knowledge is the way how we link many
little pieces of information about the world together. Questions are a way of
expressing and examining these links, thus being the key component of the analysis.
Sources can only be used effectively if we understand that the context in which the
source was created is different from the context in which we are using the information
from that source. If we can not distinguish the contrast between contexts, we also can
not correctly evaluating that information.
We will care about how questions can guide our research, and how we can take

information away from the sources, not just as 'information', but in a form that can
easily be included in our statements.
Chapter 9: Planning and Creating Your Reasoning
The key analytical questions are: Context - the external dimensions of reasoning, and
Text - the internal dimensions of reasoning
Using the analytical structure for planning: The analytical structure format can be
used, not to shape our statements, but instead to work as a 'plan' of ideas and
relationships that can then be used to support writing the narrative flow of reasoning.
Chapter 10: Bringing It All Together: Narrative and Structure
In this final chapter, the author provides a completed example of a real written
argument, so as to demonstrate the way which the main form in which we encounter
reasoning—the narrative flow—is acknowledged as a sign of an hidden process which
links premises and conclusions. This example also better demonstrates how you can
write something based on an analytical structure, point out the precision of expression
that provides a structure surrounding that logical core.


What I have learned:
The definition and importance of smart thinking.
The key elements and value of the reasoning.
The types of reasoning: Deductive and inductive reasoning.
The evaluating process included in reasoning.
How to improve the logical effectiveness of our reasoning with proper claims and links.
How to better interpret ideas and thoughts in arguments and presentations.
How to become a practical smart thinker.