What are thinking skills and why are they important?

Alvin Toffler, an American author and futurist, explained that “the illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write. It will be those who can not learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

Critical and creative thinking are skills that have been identified in the curriculum as being skills that students need for the 21st century, that is, their future. These are the skills that allow students to learn, unlearn and relearn.

As these are important skills, selective schools and scholarship exams and responded in kind—some have included thinking skills in their test which often make the test ‘harder’ or in the case of the certain exams, making ‘Thinking Skills’ a separately tested area.

But, thinking skills seems quite general doesn’t it?

After all, we think (we hope) on a daily basis from tying out shoelaces to doing more complicated maths calculations at school.

Creative and critical thinking takes things a bit further. Creative thinking is the thinking process that transforms our understanding of the world or our relationship to the world. Critical thinking, on the other hand, is when you can analyse (look at) and evaluate (think through) something to form a judgement.

This is all a bit abstract so I’ll demonstrate with 2 examples:

Example 1: Creative thinking when it comes to wrapping a present (see video)

Example 2: Critical thinking when it comes to a coronavirus tweet (see video)

Creative thinking skills help you to develop solutions for the future for problems that are unexpected. While your critical thinking skills will help you guide you in the right direction so your judgement is clear and not misinformed.

How to ACE your thinking skills test

Preparing for a thinking skills test is a bit different from preparing for something like mathematics or abstract reasoning. A large part of the preparation is about spending a LOT of time thinking through problems. When students do this and find greater insight, they’ll find it easier to do this quickly when exam time comes around.

As problems are based on context (background information), this information does form a central part in how you can problem solve. Preparation beforehand with being comfortable analysing various types of information sources will make it easier for you in your exam.

Thinking is a process and in thinking we have:

• Information source
• Assumptions
• Principles
• Arguments/claims
• Conclusions

And in tying all these things together, we have our connections or links.

To ACE your thinking skills test, you’ll need to learn to:

• Look objectively (like an outsider) into your own process of thought and understand what parts are strong and what parts are weak. These are parts we’ll label with words like assumptions etc…
• Know how to look at information whether that’s information in tables, charts, numbers and/or words and challenge what’s provided, check that things make sense and what that information is telling you – you’re going to find insight.

Therefore, there are steps you need to take to do well in the exam:

1. Prepare before the exam. Know the thinking process and apply it yourself to problems. Each checkpoint has a question that requires deeper thinking.
   
2. Read the question and identify the type of question and decide whether you can do it within your set time or skip.
3. Know the requirement of the question
4. Select the answer – use the answer options as guides.

The time limit

In many exams, you'll need to race through and answer question after question. Many people worry about this but the key thing to remember is not how many you complete. It's how many you get right.

Here's your time strategy:

1. Read the question quickly and decide whether it is a question you can complete quickly.
2. If yes, then complete. If no, then move on and come back to it later.
3. For any remaining questions at the end (30 seconds left), complete it if you can, or guess - Option B or C is often the most likely correct answer because there could be a chance that you could select the correct option by chance.

Note: Some students have been advised that they should leave the question blank rather than guessing. Unless you lose marks for incorrect answers, our advice is to guess.

It's important to note that you should not spend more than your planned time per question. Every second that you spend on figuring out that question could have been spent getting another 2-4 correct.

Common mistakes

What are the pitfalls when it comes to a Thinking Skills exam with a time limit?

• Taking too long to answer a question.
• Reading the question incorrectly.
• Not preparing beforehand and an assumption that ‘cramming’ is appropriate.

The key thing to remember with thinking skills is that preparation beforehand through ‘thinking’ about problems will allow you to perform better in the exam. Thinking skills develop with time and with exposure to problems as you start to understand and familiarise yourself with connections and links between thoughts.

What you'll learn in this course

In this course, we help you better understand the thinking process (and other types of thinking processes) so you can approach questions confidently in the exam.

In particular, we’ll explore the following areas in more detail:

• Assumptions
• Principles & 1st Principles Thinking
• Weakest/Strongest Argument
• Parallel Reasoning
• Flaws in Arguments
• Conclusions
• Outliers
• Figurative Language
• Comedic Devices
• Thinking About Data (General)
• Thinking About Data in Tables (How to Analyse & Interpret)
• Thinking About Data in Bar Charts (How to Analyse & Interpret)
• Thinking About Data in Line Charts (How to Analyse & Interpret)
• Thinking About Data in Pie Charts & Combined Graphs (How to Analyse & Interpret)
• Views, Perspectives and Nets
• Graph Trends
• Revision & Final Exam

This may seem like a lot but we'll work through these slowly and you can always go back to different areas and review checkpoints as many times as you want.

Practice time!

Now, it's your turn to practice.

Before we go onto the checkpoint questions, here’s a thought experiment that requires some deeper thinking to help put your thinking skills to work. There is no formal answer and this experiment is provided to help stimulate your creativity and critical thinking (a ‘thought experiment’ is provided at the end of every checkpoint except checkpoint 18).

Thought experiment 1:

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

Take your time to work through this thought experiment as it is not assessed and provided to help develop your deeper thinking skills. Think about various components of the question. What questions will you ask yourself and how do you answer your questions?

Now, let’s turn to the checkpoint questions.

The questions in this checkpoint are provided to give you an introduction to possible questions you may see in your exam. Don't worry too much as you'll continue to build your skills throughout the course.

Click on the button below and start your practice questions. We recommend doing untimed mode first, and then, when you're ready, do timed mode.

Every question has two solutions videos after you complete the question. The first is a quick 60 second video that shows you how our expert answers the question quickly. The second video is a more in-depth 5-steps or less explainer video that shows you the steps to take to answer the question. It's really important that you review the second video because that's where you'll learn additional tips and tricks.

Once you're done with the practice questions, move on to the next checkpoint.

Now, let’s get started on your practice questions.

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