Promoting Critical Thinking in the Language Classroom
Yaser Khajavi and Nooshin Shahvali, Iran
Yaser Khajavi is PhD student of TEFL. He currently teaches English at Islamic Azad University, Izeh branch, Iran. He is also an editorial board member of Theory and Practice in Language Studies. Articles by him have appeared recently in English Australia Journal, ETp journal and HLT magazine. E-mail: yaserkhajavi@gmail.com
Nooshin Shahvali is an English language teacher at the secondary level. She is interested in motivational aspect of language teaching and teachers’ roles. E-mail: n_sh_6812@yahoo.com
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Abstract
Introduction
Defining critical thinking
An ideal critical thinker:
Strategies to promote critical thinking in the language classroom
When discussing in the English language class
When reading English passages
Sample activities
Conclusion
References
Developing critical thinking skills of language learners may require a large amount of practice and diligence. As such, language teachers should put much effort to handle their classes in this way. However the outcome of these classes will be students who think critically and can be successful in dealing with the complexities of the modern world. Present article discusses the justification for teaching critical thinking followed by sample activities for developing thinking skills in discussion and reading classes.
It is time for teachers to come down to earth and to accept their students as individuals who have wonderful thinking abilities.
Nowadays, it is essential for everyone to have good thinking skills and abilities in order to meet the demands of modern life. Critical thinking is one of the thinking skills that should be considered in designing and improving language curriculum because the world we live in is getting more complex to understand, and how we process information has become more important than specific details. This ability can be improved in fact by teaching students ways to develop their thinking abilities. As a result, they will enjoy the benefits which are obtained due to their engagement in thinking and sharing thoughts with other learners. If we do not consider students' thinking abilities and capacities, a dull, futile and inactive classroom atmosphere will be the outcome. As a result, students may think that what we as teachers are teaching are not applicable to their lives. Thus it is advisable and helpful to try to make students skilled critical thinkers as far as we can. Besides, a large portion of classroom exchange is in the form of question and answer and it is the expertise of teacher to direct these questions and answers in a critical way.
Evrim Üstünlüoğlu believes that applying critical thinking in the language classroom enables and encourages learners to speculate, criticize, and form conclusions about knowledge they already have as well as information they will acquire in the future. To activate and increase critical thinking in their students, language teachers need to devise tasks and activities, and improve their teaching methods and materials to encourage such thinking. Teaching language skills in relation to critical thinking enables learners to differentiate a wide variety of subjective analyses, to develop self-awareness, and to see associations and complexities they might otherwise fail to spot. Taking this idea into consideration, we language teachers can encourage our students to go beyond explicit meaning and discover deeper meaning instead of only using primary thinking skills. With this in mind, present article discusses the justification for teaching critical thinking followed by sample activities for developing thinking skills in discussion and reading classes.
Critical thinking is a notion which dates back to the mid-late 20th century. Critical thinking has been defined as 'a set of independent cognitive abilities which can be taught in relation to any propositional content. Three main notions come into view from this definition; first, critical thinking takes place in our mind as it is cognitive. Second, it is teachable. And the last one it is related to any material which we teach. Another definition given by David Stein considers critical thinking as the process by which adults recognize the assumptions leading their actions, establish the historical and cultural origins of the assumptions, question the meaning of the assumptions and build up alternative habits of acting. These are some critical thinking skills; they show that we should go beyond surface meaning and consider many aspects. As these are soubskills students need to develop skills to achieve them. These subskills can be seen in real life and in language learning/teaching environment.
And finally Michael Scriven and Richard Paul define critical thinking as ‘the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from ,or generated by observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action'. In its ideal form, critical thinking is based on global intellectual principles that go beyond subject matter divisions, i.e. precision, correctness, uniformity, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and justice. As can be understood from all of the views, critical thinking requires students to go beyond simple thinking and to perform at a more complex level. Furthermore, it helps students analyze the truthfulness of utterances and come to a deeper understanding of a phenomenon. However, achieving a high level of critical thinking needs training and practice on the parts of teachers and students. Present paper is an attempt towards this goal. To begin with, who is a critical thinker?
- analyses different ideas. Analysis is necessary for thorough understanding,
- formulates reasonable assumptions i.e. he bases his ideas on solid foundations and reasons and always tries to find proper bases and reasons for coming to a conclusion. he really tries to make assumptions about the fact which he is dealing with, for example, when a teacher introduces a new subject in the class, a student who is a good critical thinker tries to link what he already knows to what he is facing now in order to predict or make some generalization for further similar subjects but in a reasonable way; this means that these assumptions are not haphazard,
- is willing to consider new ideas as novel situations and ideas are interesting not disturbing,
- is eager to be knowledgeable; more knowledge, more understanding,
- asks critical questions such as: why is it so? what is the main point? what do you mean by…..?. These are thought provoking,
- thinks deeply about an idea and considers alternatives,
- tries to link ideas and never admits an idea without logical thinking. In fact critical thinking is a process which allows a person to think deeply about a concept and to reach to deeper layers of a concept not just to its surface form, it can lead to meaningful learning because in such a process everyone tries to link what he is dealing with other similar events and do not look at events as independent concepts but as related processes. In other words, a critical thinker moves from known to unknown,
- tries new ways of tackling a problem,
- is inquisitive of new topics and situations,
- is creative in his production of ideas and critically supports them with logical explanations,
- divides ideas into constituent parts so as to internalize and evaluate them,
- is skilled in the ability to determine the quality of intellectual thoughts,
- creatively devises strategies aimed at correcting weaknesses and improving strengths,
- does not trap his/her mind in oversimplified and prejudiced mental states.
Language classes are especially suitable for teaching critical thinking due to the wealth of material and the interactive methods used. All of the characteristics mentioned above can be linked to language learning in one way or another. As most of the features are related to how to deal with new information, two skills i.e. listening and reading seem to be very important in this regard. For example, when reading one can ask critical questions such as: why is it so? what is the main point? or analyses different ideas. Moreover, when listening one can deal with many such skills e.g. divides ideas into constituent parts so as to internalize and evaluate them or formulates reasonable assumptions for dealing with new ideas.
This brings us to the second part of our article on how to promote students critical thinking in the language classroom. M Kabilan suggests that the first step is for teachers to change their attitudes towards students. But what kinds of attitudes need to be changed? Usually, some language teachers look upon their students as empty vessels, which require to be filled with information. In fact these teachers disregard their students' qualities and ideas. In addition, they do not allow their students to come into their own and express themselves. In the case of passive learners, teacher is the only one who speaks. Such teachers expect their students to do as they are told and they do not allow them to ask "why" or "how". This kind of attitudes will destroy the opportunities for learning and critical thinking. The solution to this problem is that teachers should become patient listeners to learners' opinions and questions. Teachers should do their best to avoid these attitudes and move to being open-minded in their attitudes and actions. In the following section some of the strategies which can help teachers reinforce critical thinking of their students are presented.
When the teacher answers questions or asks them, some challenging questions such as “why is it so? What do you think about…? what is your idea about…? etc. can help students think critically. These are mostly influential in verbal exchanges in the language class. R Ennis proposes the three underlying strategies as "Reflection, Reason, and Alternatives."( RRA)
- Encourage your students to be Reflective, to wait and think, instead of making impulsive judgments, or accepting the first thought that occurs in their mind, or promptly accepting whatever is manifested in the media. Many students accept whatever they are told especially if something is said by someone who they trust e.g. their friends or if some thing is written in books and newspapers. As such, students should be taught to wait after receiving ideas and think deeply and then accept them in case the information corresponds to logic and reasoning. This will lead to improvement in their critical thinking ability.
- Kindly ask questions such as "How do you know"," what are the Reasons?" so as to make sure they have underlying reasons for their ideas and to search for rationales for others' views.
- Highlight alertness for Alternatives, hypotheses, conclusions, explanations, points of views etc. Students should understand that there is no fixed idea and most of the times, there are some alternatives if the point be viewed from a different angle. This point can be taught to students and they should be sharp enough to devise new options. You can ask them e.g. “Is it possible to solve this problem in another way?” or “Do you know any cheaper way for dealing with these costs?”
- Give your students adequate time to ponder about questions and situations. In other words, provide "wait time". This is vital for deep thinking and logical reasoning.
- In a debate, write down each student's statement on the board with the student's name, so that the student receives attention and assumes some responsibility, and invite other students to comment on it. This will also lead to improvement in students’ self-esteem which consequently gives them impetus for thinking critically.
- Ask students to formulate their own questions. They need to realize that it is not just the teacher who can ask questions, students also have the right to ask. The students’ understanding of the roles which they have in the process of teaching/learning is one of the first steps in leading them toward critical thinking.
Teach students some strategies which can encourage their critical thinking. For example, teach them how to concentrate on the texts in order to make out the importance of minute details for identifying patterns, such as order patterns and sequences, similarities and contrasts, guessing and predicting, and finding the relationships. When students can have these capabilities, they will be able to classify and group items into different classes, compare and contrast the ideas in the passages, evaluate new information and to predict possible consequences. When one can recognize different kinds of information, he/she will find that can classify parts of the text quickly as he/she reads. Similarly, the students must be able to go through the texts and find out main and peripheral ideas. If not, it can be helpful for them to use a pencil or a highlighter when they read their own books. Use these to underline or highlight the reasons and conclusions. Teach students how to take out these and write them down in their own words. Asking students about the explicit ideas of the texts which are mentioned directly can not help students improve their critical thinking ability to a large extent. However, engaging students in indirect sense of the text i.e. ideas which are not cited directly can influence their critical thinking skills greatly. As such, try to give some texts which are challenging and thought provoking.
When you want to give some directions for reading activities or tests, you can use the following sample statements. It must be noted that the passages are not given because the focus is on the directions and the style of questioning students to read a text. In other words, these directions show to the students which parts must be paid more attention when reading the passages.
Activity 1
For the following passages, make a judgment about whether the argument is likely to be based on sound or false premises. Give reasons for your answers.
Activity 2
Read the passages, and identify whether each is an example of an argument, a summary, an explanation or a description. How do you know?
Activity 3
Read the following passages. For each, consider:
Is the author’s position clear?
What makes the author’s position clear or unclear?
Activity 4
Read through the passages. Decide whether each is logically consistent or not. Give your reasons.
Activity 5
For each of the passages below, identify:
The denoted meaning (dictionary meaning)
The connoted meaning (associative or implied meaning)
The use of association to create a latent message
Then read the commentary opposite
Activity 6
The following passage is not ordered logically. This makes it difficult to follow its line of reasoning. You do not need to be a specialist the subject to identify how the argument could be better constructed. Write a short list of the ways the passage is poorly organized-then order the sentences into a more logical sequence yourself. The sentences are numbered to help you write out a preferable order.
Developing critical thinking skills of language learners may take a large amount of practice and diligence. As such, language teachers should put much effort to handle their classes in this way. However the outcome of these classes will be students who think critically and can be successful in dealing with the complexities of the modern world. It is worth noting that strategies and activities presented here are only some samples of devises for developing students’ critical thinking and teachers can devise many more activities on their own based on the capacities which a critical thinker must have and apply them in their classes.
Cottrell, S ‘Critical Thinking Skills Developing Effective Analysis and Argument’ Palgrave Macmillan 2005
Ennis, H, Robert (www.criticalthinking.net) 2011
Kabilan, K M ‘Creative and Critical Thinking in Language Classrooms’. The Internet TESL Journal. VI, 2000
Scriven, M. and Paul. M Defining critical thinking: A draft statement for the National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking.
(www.criticalthinking.org/university/univclass/Defining.html) 1996
Stein, D Teaching Critical Reflection. Myths and Realities No. 7. ERIC Clearinghouse on Adult Career, and Vocational Education Columbus Ohio 2000
Üstünlüoglu E ‘Language Teaching through Critical Thinking and Self-Awareness’ English Teaching Forum 42 2004
Please check the Creative Methodology for the Classroom course at Pilgrims website.
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