How to Read a Paragraph: The Art of Close Reading, Second Edition

How to Read a Paragraph introduces the importance of purposeful skilled reading and lays out methods by which to develop close reading skills using the tools of critical thinking. Developing these skills enables students to read for deep understanding, to properly analyze and assess what they read, and to reason within the logic of an author. As readers engage with the thinking of authors and uncover their assumptions and motivations, they glean the most useful information from their written work.

This book pairs with How to Write a Paragraph to offer an in-depth introduction to effective reading and writing skills. Activities in the book help sharpen reading comprehension skills for an elevated level of self-understanding, fulfillment, and depth of vision.

As part of the Thinker’s Guide Library, this book advances the mission of the Foundation for Critical Thinking to promote fairminded critical societies through cultivating essential intellectual abilities and virtues within every field of study across world.

Dr. Richard Paul was a leading proponent of critical thinking and, through his work and legacy, remains a distinguished thinker in the field. He founded the Center for Critical Thinking at Sonoma State University in 1980, followed by the Foundation for Critical Thinking. He developed concepts, principles, and theory essential to a robust and fairminded conception of critical thinking. Paul authored or coauthored more than two hundred articles and seven books on the critical thinking. He presented workshops to hundreds of thousands of educators over his 35-year career as a leader in the critical thinking movement. Dr. Linda Elder is an educational psychologist and internationally recognized authority on critical thinking who has taught both psychology and critical thinking at the college level. She has been president of the Foundation for Critical Thinking and the executive director of the Center for Critical Thinking for 25 years. She has a special interest in the relation of thought and emotion, as well as the cognitive and affective and has developed an original theory of the stages of critical thinking development. Elder has coauthored four books on critical thinking, as well as all 23 titles found in the Thinker’s Guide Library.