SMART THINKING

-skills for critical understanding and writing-

MATTHEW ALLEN
-review-
“Smart thinking is not just a method or a skill. It is also an attitude. Practising and using the
skills, with a clear awareness of what you are doing and a willingness to reflect on and learn
about the process of reasoning, will give you the right approach to being a smart thinker,
effective in your reasoning and able to achieve your goals. ”- Matthew Allen

’’Smart Thinking” is a practical guide which is helpful on improving reader’s critical

and analytical thinking, as well as on how to develop and support an argument. Written in an
accessible style, this book is perfect for everyone, especially for students who are trying to
improve their analytical and theoretical abilities. This book treats the various aspects of how
to write and support arguments, but also it emphasises the necessity of developing them
coherently, taking into consideration the context and the audience.

Matthew Allen adopts a modern orientation, rather than a traditional one based on
logic, focusing on reasoning as a communicative act. Moreover, this book is designed to make
the reader develop a critical thinking during the process of reading, due to the fact that each
chapter is structured to provide examples to support the explanation of each technical term. I
strongly believe that in this book you will find an answer to every question you may have
about what claim and reasoning are and how to write them.

The first four chapters are designed to serve as an introduction to what is understood
by the term ’’Smart thinking”, but expecially, the key terms are elaborated with examples, in
the chapters alocated to explaining them in-depth. The first chapter is the introduction in what
’’Smart thinking” means and why we need to think smart. Matthew Allen insists on the key
term ’’reasoning” as the basic unit of thinking: ’’To think smart, you must use reasoning.
Reasoning is the basis of much of our thinking”. This is why the second chapter’s main focus
is on claims and reasoning and how the interfere or link together. In order to determine what
claims are, the author starts with two examples from which he builds his entire thesis. The
third chapter’s goal is to show that the reader has to link claims together to form reasonig:
’’Claims are the basic material of responding, but they must be linked together if we are to
explain our points of view”. Chapter four comes in completion of the previous chapter, but
with a more detailed work on analytical structure diagrams, as well as on premises. What is
interesting at those chapters is that Matthew Allen introduces each therms gradually to form
corespondences between chapters which is a bonus for the reader.

The next three chapters are aimed to emphasize what has already been explained and
to enlarge the basic concepts. Chapter five will cover two main areas, namely how to build a
well-formed claim and how a poor formed claim may appear to have no foundation, according
to the audience. ’’The aim in writing well-formed claims in an analytical structure format is
to make each a separate statement that contains all the information necessary for it to express
what we meant”, interesting here is the coherent language Allen is using in order to make
himself understood by the entire audience, which is the main thing he is trying to make us do.
The next chapter developes what was already mentioned in chapter four, namely the links
between claims, but what is different here is the central point, which is on connections of out
premises with their conclusion. The various types of reasoning, in a detailed way, are
encountered in chapter seven, which provide further informations about the difference
between deductive and inductive reasoning than in chapter two. The main reason which make
this book perfect for students who want to understand how analytical thinking functions are
the examples provided by the author at every subchapter which are structured to clarify even
more the concepts introduced.

The last three chapters are built to give a conclusion to everything that was previously
mentioned. Reasearch, reasoning and analysis are the three main topics developed in chapter
eight, but this chapter is made to cause a mutation in people’s minds and to free them from
conventional thinking. Matthew Allen highlights that: “Finding books, conducting
experiments and searching computer database does not, however, address the key point that
searching for knowledge is a part of reasoning”, this statement being the thesis he is basing
his argumentation on. In chapter nine, everything is about the key questions that can help the
reader determine the external context in which the argument or explanation fits. “When
planning and creating an argument or explanation, the particular context in which this
reasoning occurs must be actively considered”, here he is talking about the importance that
the context is playing in writing and, then presenting your argumentation. This perspective is
a rather new way of seeing things than the traditional conventions overly used in the
educational system. The last chapter is an example that subsumes the theoretical aspects
which were explained throughout the book and act as a demonstration of how a well-formed
essay should look like: “This example I used to convince students of the need to reference
properly when they write essays”.

This book, as the author said, is made for teachers and students who want to improve
their critical thinking. To assure that this thing is happening, it is added in the book a review
at each chapter which serves as a conclusion to what was explained. Moreover, independent
from the auxiliary questions and exercises, a review exercise is included again as a conclusion
to all the exercises in the chapters. Matthew Allen insists through the book about the key
concepts that are imperatively needed to be known and understood by each student in order to
construct a good essay. On the other hand, a weak point might be the multitude of examples
that can sometimes confuse the reader and he tend to over explain what is already inferred
from the context.

In conclusion, I recommend “Smart Thinking” by Matthew Allen for each and

everyone who wants to get familiarised with the analytical structure format, reasoning and
claims, but also for those who feel the need of practicing as they are reading the book. In my
opinion, the theoretical terms, the analytical structure and the practical applications are
combined in a good harmony with actions as a tool for helping the reader to plan the
arguments in the essay and present it afterwards. “This format-along with the idea of
analytical questions-is one way of representing the thought processes that we must go
through to be smart thinkers”, I can only totally agree with this statement and I would also
add that the ideas presented in this book are generally valuable and are explained in such a
way that it would be a true pleasure for the reader to get through it.