The Impact of Teaching Critical Thinking on Iranian Students’ Writing Performance and Their Critical Thinking Dispositions (original) (raw)
Related papers
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.
Modern Journal of Language Teaching Methods, 2015
The present investigation was an attempt to study the Effectiveness of Teaching Critical Thinking on Iranian Upper-Intermediate EFL Learners' Essay Writing Ability. To that end, an OPT test was administered to 110 university students learning English language in institutes. Learners who scored between one above and below the standard deviation were selected. 40 learners were selected and they were divided into experimental and control group, each group contained 20 learners. A writing test was administered to both groups as a pre-test to take their initial knowledge of writing ability. The writing section of the TOEFL test was selected to test the writing ability of the participants. The experimental group received treatment in order to help them improve their writing ability by teaching critical thinking in fifteen sessions .The control group received no treatment. Finally both groups sat for the post-test of the same writing test. The results were analyzed through ANCOVA and it was explored that teaching critical thinking had a positive effect on Iranian EFL learners' essay writing ability.
2020
espanolEl presente estudio tuvo la intencion de investigar la interaccion de la ensenanza explicita del pensamiento critico, el rendimiento de la escritura academica, la capacidad de pensamiento critico y las disposiciones de pensamiento critico de los estudiantes iranies. Con este fin, se seleccionaron 140 estudiantes de la Universidad de Ciencias Medicas de Jahrom (73 hombres y 67 mujeres). Se dividieron en los grupos experimentales y de control. Ambos grupos recibieron instruccion en cursos de escritura academica durante 15 semanas 3 horas por semana. A los estudiantes de ambos grupos se les administraron pruebas previas y posteriores a la instruccion para examinar la efectividad de la instruccion. Se utilizaron tres instrumentos en este estudio, incluyendo la prueba de ensayo desarrollada por el investigador, la Prueba de ensayo de pensamiento critico Ennis-Weir y el Inventario de disposiciones de pensamiento critico de California (CCTDI). La estadistica descriptiva y la prueba ...
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.
2016
The present exploratory mixed methods study aimedto develop a scale for assessing critical thinking (CT) ability of Iranian EFL learners. The study wasconducted in three phases. In phase one, the features of CT components were examined in the writingsof 120 participants. A holistic and an analytic scale were developed based on their performance in exploiting the components of CT and the features of CT components.In the second phase, the language learners' new writing samples (N=110) were analyzed to examine to what extent they could employ the CT components.Also, the reliability and validity of the newly developed scale was calculated. Factor analysis revealed that the scale measured the four constructs of clarity, fairness-breadth, depth- significance-logicalness, and accuracy-precision-relevance.In the final phase, the researchers implemented the newly developed scale on a new group of learners (N=33)to observe the degree the scale couldassess the CT ability of language learners.
Iranian Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 2016
The present exploratory mixed methods study aimedto develop a scale for assessing critical thinking (CT) ability of Iranian EFL learners. The study wasconducted in three phases. In phase one, the features of CT components were examined in the writingsof 120 participants. A holistic and an analytic scale were developed based on their performance in exploiting the components of CT and the features of CT components.In the second phase, the language learners' new writing samples (N=110) were analyzed to examine to what extent they could employ the CT components.Also, the reliability and validity of the newly developed scale was calculated. Factor analysis revealed that the scale measured the four constructs of clarity, fairness-breadth, depth-significance-logicalness, and accuracy-precision-relevance.In the final phase, the researchers implemented the newly developed scale on a new group of learners (N=33)to observe the degree the scale couldassess the CT ability of language learners.
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.
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.
2019
The study aimed to investigate the relationship between process writing (PW) and critical thinking (CT) ability of Iranian EFL learners. Furthermore, the role of PW in the enhancement of CT was investigated. In so doing, 65 upper-intermediate language learners were selected from Rasht Islamic Azad University based on convenience sampling. The results of the pretests indicated that participants were homogeneous regarding language proficiency as determined by Babel test, CT by Watson-Glaser critical thinking appraisal (W-GCTA), and writing ability by a writing test. By implementing a quasi-experimental design, the participants were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The experimental group received a step-by-step process of teaching CT and utilized CT skills in developing an essay. The control group, in contrast, merely practiced PW. After applying the non-parametric Spearman rank-order correlation, the results revealed that there was a significant correlation betwee...