People often talk about learning from good examples, or learning from bad examples. That's fine and dandy, but if you have no frame of reference, how do you know what's good or bad?
One option is to make note of the things that wow you. What I mean is anything that literally makes you say "wow" or at least makes you think it strongly. It could be "wow, that is badass" or "wow, that is moronic" or "wow, that is truly surprising" or anything else. The importance here is the wow.
If you keep track of those moments, then look into them and figure out what is causing that reaction, you will learn. If you don't know what's causing it, then do some comparisons. If you have two stories that contain romance that tragically ends when one of the characters dies, put them side-by-side. Why do you care about one couple, but not the other? Why is one death tragic to you and the other makes you relieved for the relationship to be over?
You may end up needing to figure out the wow components. That is, what are the small things that you notice that are intriguing or unusual to you? When you have enough of those components working together, you can get that big wow from them. If a story has a bunch of "are you kidding me?!" components, you will see the crap pile they create.
I think it is a good idea to try to keep "good" and "bad" out of your descriptions. So much is relative that if you think an example is one or the other, you may miss out on the bigger picture. You may find something that is a good example of a rational argument, bad a terrible example of humor. You may find a decent romance story mired by the setting of terrible science fiction. Or you may simply see somebody who is trying hard, but not quite hitting the mark. In tat case, you really have to separate what is working and what is not working. And that is where you will be happy to recognize the components that make up the whole.
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