THE EFFECT OF TEACHING CRITICAL THINKING ON IRANIAN UPPER-INTERMEDIATE EFL LEARNERS' ESSAY WRITING ABILITY (original) (raw)
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The Effect of Teaching Critical Thinking on Iranian EFL Learners' Essay Writing
Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 2018
The present study made an attempt to determine the effect of teaching critical thinking skills on Iranian EFL learners' essay writing ability. To do this, a sample of 60 EFL learners was selected based on their performance on Preliminary English Test (PET). The participants were randomly assigned to two equal groups of control and experimental. An essay-writing test functioning as pre-test was administered on both groups in order to ensure their homogeneity in terms of writing ability. The groups received 10 sessions of writing instruction; however, experimental group received additional instruction and practice regarding the techniques of critical thinking. Finally, both groups took an essay writing posttest in order to compare their writing achievements. Both pretest and posttest were scored by two raters using TOEFL rating scales. The results of paired and independent sample t-tests showed that critical thinking techniques significantly enhanced EFL learners writing ability.
The amount of information available today is massive; therefore, everyone needs a guide to weed through this huge bulk of information and not just passively accept it. Students need to develop and effectively apply critical thinking skills to their academic studies. Critical thinking represents a higher level of thought and in order to think critically, one must be able to take other viewpoints into consideration before coming to a conclusion. The present study was an attempt to find out if there were any relationship between the critical thinking ability and writing proficiency of Iranian EFL learners or not. In other words, the constructs involved in this study were critical thinking and writing proficiency and the relationship between them. This study was conducted among a number of the senior undergraduate students of Islamic Azad University at Central Tehran, North Tehran, and Mashad. The 141 subjects selected randomly to participate in this study took a standard test of English writing and the Critical Thinking Appraisal. The writing papers were scored by two raters while the Critical Thinking Appraisal was a multiple-choice test. The Pearson Product Correlation Coefficient formula was applied and a convincing relationship was found between the two factors. The data revealed that there was no significant relationship between the students’ gender and their performance in the Critical Thinking Appraisal and writing tests.
The Impact of Critical Thinking Tasks on Paragraph Wrting Ability of Iranian Efl Learners
2013
The present study has made an attempt to investigate the impact of critical thinking tasks on paragraph writing ability of Iranian EFL learners. The participants of the study were selected based on their performance in an OPT test, a Cornell Critical Thinking Test form X and a pre-test of writing. In the next step 60 EFl learners whose score fell between 1SD±Mean were chosen to conduct the study. The participants were divided in two classes of 30.Both classes were taught academic paragraph writing, however, unlike the control group, the participants in the experimental one received special treatment with critical thinking tasks. By the end of the term, a post-test of writing was conducted and the results were analyzed through an ANCOVA test. The results showed significant difference between the control and experimental group. The findings of the study indicated that using critical thinking tasks can improve the paragraph writing ability of EFL learners.
Applications of Language Studies, 2018
Recent research suggests that critical thinking is not typically an intrinsic part of instruction at any level. Students come without any training in it, while faculties tend to take it for granted as an automatic by-product of their teaching. Yet without critical thinking systematically designed into instruction, learning is transitory and superficial. Therefore, the purpose of the present study is to investigate the impacts of teaching critical thinking skills on the development of the reading and writing abilities of Iranian EFL learners, in line with other studies confirming the positive relationship between critical thinking and language skills. The treatment consisted of 18 instructional sessions of 20 minutes on critical thinking. The participants of the study were 50 male and female students with pre-advanced proficiency level. The students in the experimental group were taught critical thinking skills beside other materials while the students in the control group did not have critical thinking instruction. The data were analyzed using several independent t-tests which were administered across pre-test and post-test scores. The results indicated that critical thinking led to students' significant improvement in reading and writing abilities in the experimental group. The results have implications for teachers, institutes and material designers.
Critical thinking is fundamental to all language learning skills and to all disciplines and aspects of our lives as well. This study investigates the effects of critical thinking on writing skill of the learners of teaching language as a foreign language, TEFL, students in Tehran Payame Noor University, Iran. Participants of the study consisted of 26 female TEFL students between ages of 24 to 40, who were selected non-randomly. All the subjects, as one group, were pretested before treatment and received a posttest after that in the form of two writings. A 4-point Likert scale questionnaire was given to the subjects before and after the treatment. All the procedure of the study was done via the Internet. Applying t-test to the results of the research revealed that although enhancing critical thinking skills had a statistically significant impact on TEFL subjects' writings. The implication might be that critical thinking is a process that should be taught from the very beginning levels of education system and integrated with all aspects of instruction in language learning pedagogy.
Advances in Language and Literary Studies, 2015
The current study intended to find out the relationship between critical thinking skills and the quality of Iranian TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) students' writing. One-hundred forty students who were homogeneous in their language proficiency were selected non-randomly. The researcher asked students to take part in a proficiency test named Nelson test (intermediate 200B) and she chose students whose level was intermediate as participants of the study. This study was an associational (correlational) study. To achieve the goal of the study California Critical Thinking Test (form B) was administered among intermediate students to measure students' critical thinking skills (analysis, evaluation, inference). Then the researcher asked the participants to write on a given topic and their writings were rated by two language teachers by following the rules of scoring in Quellmaz's scale. The inter-rater correlation across all papers calculated in order to be sure about the objectivity and reliability of scores. The Pearson-Product Moment was used to examine the relationship between variables, furthermore multiple regressions was applied to predict the degree of their relationship. The results of the study revealed that there is a positive relationship between critical thing skills and writing quality. Furthermore, it was proved that evaluation has the strongest degree of relationship with the quality of writing.
Critical Thinking and EFL Learners' Performance on Different Writing Modes
2014
The essential function of critical thinking in education is obvious by many studies done in this field. The main purpose of this article is to find the relationship between critical thinking levels of Iranian EFL learners and their performance on different modes of writing. The sample of the study selected among those who studying English at the advanced level at Kish Institute of Science and Technology, Rasht, Iran. The instruments used in this study included the Longman paper and pencil test (2004) for ensuring the homogeneity of the learners, a critical thinking questionnaire (Honey, 2004) with 30 items into the 5-point Likert scale type that used to divide learners into high and low critical thinkers and an analytic scale of Weir (1990) for assessing participants’ argumentative and descriptive writings. The study followed an ex-post facto design. The results of inferential statistics revealed a statistically significant difference between the writing performance of high and low ...
Effects of Critical Thinking on Writing Cause and Effect Essays by Iranian EFL Learners
2021
The goal of the current study was to investigate the effects of critical thinking skill on EFL learners’ cause and effect essay writing and their attitudes towards it. To achieve this goal, 60 Iranian upper-intermediate EFL learners were randomly divided into two equal control and experimental groups. After evaluating their knowledge of writing, the conventional teaching methods were used for the control group while an eight-step method was used to promote the critical thinking skill for the experimental group. Then the participants sat for the second test to assess the effect of critical thinking instruction and to compare the groups with each other. Elicitation of their attitudes towards the method was done by the questionnaire. The results revealed that the critical thinking instruction had meaningful consequences on the cause and effect essay writing of the participants, and the participants had positive attitudes towards the training. The findings of the research can recommend ...
2020
The case study aims at students in the correlation between critical thinking and writing ability to analyze the students how the writing can improve the level of thinking. The main source of the data is observation in students in the third semester at English Teaching Education Department (ETED) of UINSA. This case is gotten in qualitative data by observing the class and interview with some students in the third semester in Written English (WE) class at English Teaching Education Department (ETED) of UINSA. This case study makes conclude that the results of this case are most of the students can't write with the correct grammar, not only that, but also the teachers don't understand what strategies for students.
This study investigated the attitude of the Iranian EFL teachers and learners toward the role of critical thinking disposition in enhancing argumentative writing in the Iranian EFL context at Islamic Azad University, Kurdistan branch. Attitude plays an important role that affecting language learning, especially writing skills in an EFL context like Iran. In this descriptive study, 14 EFL teachers and 80 EFL learners both males and females were selected based on a random sampling method. The data were gathered based on a survey approach, by using the online CCTDI questionnaire. To answer the research questions of this study and uncover the attitude of EFL teachers and learners towards the treatment, the responses the to CCTDI online questionnaire were coded and analyzed. The results indicated that teachers and learners had positive attitudes towards all components of CCTDI. They represented a highly positive disposition towards truth-seeking and inquisitiveness. Results of the study revealed that of the EFL teachers and learners have a positive attitude regarding English language teaching and learning. Another finding of the study was that, having favorable perspective toward English did not enhance their proficiency in learning English. It is hoped that the findings of this study help teacher and learners learn about critical thinking principles they will apply prudent judgment, challenge the improbable, pursue difficulties, establish alternatives, use tactics, consider alternative perspectives, and attempt to be objective.