Drawing from basic assumptions about learning and critical thinking skills, this paper suggests a teaching method for helping community college students to use their critical thinking capacity in their college courses. First, a series of assumptions commonly held by teachers about the nature of learning are presented, and contrasted with assumptions about learning that are supported by research. The next sections discuss the implications of these research findings for instruction, arguing that when students fail to do critical or abstract thinking about a subject, it may be that they lack the requisite concrete knowledge specific to that subject; and that time and opportunity must be provided in the curriculum and the classroom for students to acquire the necessary foundation of basic, concrete knowledge and skills before being faced with lectures, readings, and tasks that require critical or abstract thinking. Appended material begins with a lecture to be given to students in the first week of a course which discusses the steps to be taken in learning new materials or skills. Next, samples of student work from a pre-college developmental writing course are provided, illustrating student progress in an 11-week quarter. Charts are then presented showing the causal sequence of learning and a natural learning, instructional sequence model for teaching one topic, skill, or rule. Finally, a sample learning sequence for identifying independent and dependent clauses and an evaluation form for student writing are presented. (LAL)