How to improve your Critical Thinking Skills to score better in entrance tests and scholarship tests?

Developing critical thinking skills is key to a student’s success in all Selective School entrance tests and scholarship tests across Australia. These tests don’t assess rote knowledge rather evaluate a student’s ability to analyse information, solve complex problems, and think logically under pressure.

Here’s a guide to help students improve and sharpen their critical thinking for these assessments.

What is Critical Thinking? 🤔

Critical thinking isn’t about memorising facts or formulas. It’s about using logic and reasoning to analyse and solve problems. This skill is a key component of Selective School entrance exams like the NSW and Victoria Selective Tests, OC Test, HAST, NAPLAN, and scholarship tests from providers like ACER, Edutest, and GATE. These tests use questions that require students to go beyond what they have learned in the curriculum and apply their knowledge in new and unfamiliar ways. The goal is to assess a student’s aptitude—their potential to learn and reason—not just their achievement.

🧠Foundational Skills: The Building Blocks

Before diving into specific critical thinking strategies, students must have a solid grasp of foundational skills.

• Strong Reading Comprehension: Encourage wide and varied reading. This includes fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and news articles. Students should practice identifying the main ideas, themes, and underlying assumptions in a text. Asking open-ended questions about what they read helps develop deeper understanding and interpretation skills.
• Mathematical Proficiency: Critical thinking in math goes beyond basic calculations. Students need to be able to apply mathematical concepts to solve complex, multi-step word problems. They should be encouraged to write out their workings instead of doing mentally. Doing this reduces errors and helps them visualise the problem-solving process.

💪Strategies for improving Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is a process of reasoning and questioning. Once a strong foundation is in place, you can focus on specific strategies to hone critical thinking. Here are some techniques to help students improve:

1. Ask Incisive Questions:

Instead of just accepting information, students should be encouraged to ask questions. This can be as simple as asking:

• What is the main argument here?
• What evidence supports this claim?
• Are there any assumptions being made?
• What are the pros and cons of this idea?

This process forces students to engage with the material on a deeper level.

2. Practice Active Problem-Solving:

Critical thinking is most often used to solve problems. Encourage students to tackle problems from different angles. For example, for a math problem, instead of just finding the answer, they should try to figure out a faster or more efficient way to solve it. This promotes creative and analytical reasoning.

3. Analyse & Deconstruct Arguments:

Many tests, especially those with a verbal reasoning component, require students to identify flaws in an argument. They should learn to recognise logical fallacies and understand the different parts that make up an argument (e.g., premises, conclusions, and supporting evidence).

4. Use Visualisation and Mind Mapping:

For subjects like abstract or spatial reasoning, visual aids can be a game-changer. Students can create mind maps or draw diagrams to represent complex information, identify connections between concepts, and visualise logical sequences.

5. Practice Targeted Questions:

While general skill-building is crucial, targeted practice is also essential. Students should work on specific types of questions they struggle with. For example, if a student finds poetry comprehension difficult, they should do targeted practice with various poems to familiarise themselves with different styles and figurative language.

6. Practice with Puzzles & Games: 

Engage in activities that build logical and spatial reasoning. This can include:

• Logic puzzles (e.g., Sudoku, chess).
• Riddles and brain teasers.
• Spatial puzzles (e.g., tangrams, Rubik’s cubes, or questions involving folding and cutting shapes).

These activities train the brain to recognise patterns and think systematically, which are skills directly transferable to the test.

📚🎯Effective Preparation Habits 

Preparation isn’t just about the content; it’s also about the process.

1. Consistent Practice:

Critical thinking is a skill that develops over time. Students should engage in a little bit of work each day over an extended period rather than cramming.

2. Quality over Quantity:

Focus on understanding the logic behind a question rather than just solving many questions. After completing a practice question, review the answer and explanation carefully. Understand why the correct answer is right and why the incorrect ones are wrong.

3. Analyse & Learn from Mistakes:

After completing practice tests, students should carefully review the questions they got wrong. Encourage students to identify their weaknesses and then do targeted practice in those areas. This systematic approach of practice, reflect, and improve is more effective than random drilling.

4. Time Management:

All these tests are time-pressured. Students need to practice answering questions quickly and accurately. They should work on pacing themselves and avoid getting stuck on a single difficult question for too long.

5. Use Practice Tests:

Familiarise students with the test format, question types, and digital interface (as many tests are now computer-based). This can be done using a few official practice tests available. Also, students can consider using practice tests from reliable test-prep digital platforms like Selectivetrial. Preparing with practice tests helps reduce anxiety and builds confidence for actual test day.

Level up your child’s entrance test and scholarship test preparation with Selectivetrial.