A Rationale for the Integration of Critical Thinking Skills in EFL/ESL Instruction
Abstract
Critical thinking has become a high priority in almost every institution and educational system around the world, particularly since the second half of the 20th century. Developing the learners’ critical thinking skills has become an educational ideal that schools strive to achieve. There is a tacit consensus about the importance of incorporating critical thinking in education and ample literature has been written about it although there are different approaches to how this should be done. Integrating critical thinking skills in language instruction, however is a less explored area, especially when it comes to justifying this process. The main purpose of this paper is to present a rational for the inclusion of critical thinking skills in language teaching with reference to EFL and ESL. Five categories of reasons are suggested to support the implementation of critical thinking skills in the language classroom. The first is philosophical reasons related to the connection between language and thought. The second is cognitive and metacognitive reasons dealing with how critical thinking skills influence and are influenced by processes such as memory, comprehension and metacognition. The third is pedagogical reasons related the fact that many modern language teaching methods and techniques today require the learner to engage in problem solving, evaluation and decision making. The last are socio-economic reasons linked to the requirements of the job market.
Keywords
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Bloom, B. S. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives. Vol. 1: Cognitive domain (pp.20-24). New York: McKay.
Brookfield, S. (1989). Developing critical thinkers. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Brown, R. (1973). A first language: The early stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Chamot, A. U. (1995). Creating a community of thinkers in the ESL/EFL classroom. TESOL Matters, 5(5).
Collins A., Brown J. S., & Larkin K. M. (1980). Inference in text understanding. In R. J. Spiro, B. C. Bruce, & W. F. Brewer (Eds.), Theoretical issues in reading comprehension (pp.385-410). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Dewey, J. (1933). How we think: A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process (revised ed.). Boston: D. C. Heath and Company.
Dickinson, L. (1992). Learner autonomy 2: Learner training for language learning. Authentik, Dublin.
Dong, Y. R. (2006). Learning to think in English. Educational Leadership, 64(2), 22-26.
Dwyer, C. P., Hogan, M. J., & Stewart, I. (2014). An integrated critical thinking framework for the 21st century. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 12, 43-52.
Ennis, R. H. (1987). A taxonomy of critical thinking dispositions and abilities. In J. Baron & R. Sternberg (Eds.), Teaching thinking skills: Theory and practice (pp.9-26). New York: W.H. Freeman.
Facione, P. A. (1990). Critical thinking: A statement of expert consensus for purposes of educational assessment and instruction. Millbrae, CA: The California Academic Press.
Flavell, J. (1976). Metacognitive aspects of problem solving. In L. Resnick (Ed.), The nature of intelligence (pp.231-236). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Garrison, D. R. (2002). Cognitive presence for effective asynchronous online learning: The role of reflective inquiry, self-direction and metacognition. Presented at the Fourth Annual Sloan ALN Workshop, New York.
Hashemi, M. R., & Zabihi, R. (2012). Does critical thinking enhance EFL learners’ receptive skills? Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 3(1), 172-179.
Hare, W. (1998). Critical thinking as an aim of education. Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines, 18(2), 38-51.
Holec, H. (1981). Autonomy and foreign language learning. Pergamon Press for the Council of Europe, Oxford.
Jacobs, G. M., & Farrell, T. S. (2003). Understanding and implementing the CLT (communicative language teaching) paradigm. RELC Journal, 34(1), 5-30.
Kamali, Z., & Fahim, M. (2011). The relationship between critical thinking ability of Iranian EFL learners and their resilience level facing unfamiliar vocabulary items in reading. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 2(1), 104-111.
Kaplan, L. D. (1991). Teaching intellectual autonomy: The failure of the critical thinking movement. Educational Theory, 41(4), 361-370.
Karimi, L., & Veisi, F. (2016). The impact of teaching critical thinking skills on reading comprehension of Iranian intermediate EFL learners. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 6(9), 1869.
Kennedy, S. (2010). Infusing critical thinking into an employability skills program: The effectiveness of an immersion approach (Unpublished thesis). Edith Cowan University.
Krathwohl, D. R. (2002). A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy: An overview. Theory Into Practice, 41(4), 212-218.
Ku, K. Y. (2009). Assessing students’ critical thinking performance: Urging for measurements using multi-response format. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 4(1), 70-76.
Ku, K. Y. L., & Ho, I. T. (2010). Metacognitive strategies that enhance critical thinking. Metacognition and Learning, 5, 251-267.
Kumaravadivelu, B. (2006). Understanding language teaching: From method to postmethod. Routledge.
Lipman, M. (2003). Thinking in education. Cambridge University Press.
Little, D. (1991). Learner autonomy 1: Definitions, issues and problems. Dublin: Authentik.
McGarry, D. (1995). Learner autonomy 1: definitions, issues and problems. Dublin: Authentik.
Nikoopour, J., Amini F. M., & Nasiri, M. (2011). On the relationship between critical thinking and language learning strategies among Iranian EFL learners. Journal of Technology & Education, 5(3), 195-200.
Norris, S. P., & Phillips, L. M. (1987). Explanations of reading comprehension: Schema theory and critical thinking theory. Teachers College Record, (2), 281-306.
Oxford, R. (1990). Language learning strategies: What every teacher should know. Boston: Heinle & Heinle.
Oxford, R., & Nyikos. (1989). Variables affecting choice of language learning strategies by university students. The Modern Language Journal, 73(3), 291-300.
Pollock, E., Chandler, P., & Sweller, J. (2002). Assimilating complex information. Learning and Instruction, 12, 61-86.
Riley, P. (Ed.). (1985). Discourse and learning. Longman Publishing Group.
Rumelhart, D. E. (1978). Schemata: The building blocks of cognition. San Diego, CA: Center for Human Information Processing, University of California, San Diego.
Siegel, H. (1988). Educating reason: Rationality, critical thinking and education. New York: Routledge.
Sofo, F. (2004). Open your mind: The 7 keys to thinking critically. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin.
Sternberg, R. J. (Ed.). (1994). Thinking and problem solving. San Diego: Academic Press.
Beginner S. J. (2010). Cognitive load theory: Recent theoretical advances. In J. L. Plass, R. Moreno, & R. Brünken (Eds.), Cognitive load theory (pp.29-47). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Willingham, D. (2008). Critical thinking: Why is it so hard to teach. Arts Education Policy Review, 109(4), 21-29.
World Bank Institute. (2007). Building knowledge economies. Advanced strategies for development. World Bank Institute, Knowledge for Development Program.
Yorke, M. (2006). Employability in higher education: What it is— what it is not. Learning and Employability Series 1. York, UK: Higher Education Academy.
Zare, P. (2012). Language learning strategies among EFL/ESL learners: A review of literature. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 2(5), 162-169.
Zare, P., & Nooreen, N. (2011). The relationship between language learning strategy use and reading comprehension achievement among Iranian undergraduate EFL learners. World Applied Sciences Journal, 13(8), 1870-1877.
Zimmerman, B. (1995). Self-regulation involves more than metacognition: A social cognitive perspective. Educational Psychologist, 30(4), 217-221.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/9702
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
Copyright (c) 2017 Mohamed Elfatihi
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Share us to: 
Reminder
- How to do online submission to another Journal?
- If you have already registered in Journal A, then how can you submit another article to Journal B? It takes two steps to make it happen:
1. Register yourself in Journal B as an Author
- Find the journal you want to submit to in CATEGORIES, click on “VIEW JOURNAL”, “Online Submissions”, “GO TO LOGIN” and “Edit My Profile”. Check “Author” on the “Edit Profile” page, then “Save”.
2. Submission
- Go to “User Home”, and click on “Author” under the name of Journal B. You may start a New Submission by clicking on “CLICK HERE”.
We only use three mailboxes as follows to deal with issues about paper acceptance, payment and submission of electronic versions of our journals to databases:
caooc@hotmail.com; hess@cscanada.net; hess@cscanada.org
Articles published in Higher Education of Social Science are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY).
HIGHER EDUCATION OF SOCIAL SCIENCE Editorial Office
Address: 1055 Rue Lucien-L'Allier, Unit #772, Montreal, QC H3G 3C4, Canada.
Telephone: 1-514-558 6138
Website: Http://www.cscanada.net Http://www.cscanada.org
E-mail: caooc@hotmail.com; office@cscanada.net
Copyright © 2010 Canadian Research & Development Center of Sciences and Cultures 
