Learning to think is a complex activity cultivated through reading, writing, listening, speaking and remembering textual materials. The Future of Thinking adapts rhetorical exercises such as paraphrase, precis, summary and transcription to give students a versatile range of strategies for making sense of texts, and encourages the rapid development of practical critical skills in a wide range of humanities students. In this approach short written and spoken exercises are given as much weight as the formal essay with emphasis placed on the understanding and analysis of information, rather than on its regurgitation.

The authors have been successfully using this method of teaching for some time, and the book includes examples of exercises they have used, with the results and feedback from their students.