“Педагогические науки”/ 5.Современные методы преподавания.

Avagyan Svetlana

Teacher in NTUU “KPI”

The Role of Critical Thinking in Teaching Foreign Languages

People must ask questions, invent new ways of solving problems, connect new knowledge to the information they already have and apply their knowledge in new situations to live and complete in this information age. In a few words, learners must develop critical thinking skills which are the most important goals in education. A person who thinks critically can ask appropriate questions, collect relevant information, efficiently and creatively sort through this information, reason logically from this information, and come to reliable and trustworthy conclusions about the world that enable him to live and act successfully in it.

Most authors who write about critical thinking agree that critical thinking has many dimensions: it involves knowledge, cognitive skills, and a disposition (a state of mind to “be” a critical thinker). Dr. Steven Brookfield (1991), states, “Critical Thinking involves recognizing and researching assumptions that undergird thoughts and actions.” He implies that critical thinking involves research skills, being able to analyze the source of our knowledge, and how we use it in making decisions. Diane Halpern (1998), past president of the American Psychological Association, defines critical thinking as, “the use of cognitive skills or strategies that increase the probability of a desirable outcome … where desirable is defined by the individual, such as making good career choices or wise financial investments.” She says critical thinking is purposeful, reasoned, and goal directed. She goes on to say that critical thinking is the type of thinking used in problem solving, determining probable outcomes, formulating inferences, and making decisions.

A variety of definitions of critical thinking have been provided by theorists and educators. Siegel (1998) calls critical thinking “the educational cognate of rationality”. Lipman (1991) defines it as healthy skepticism, whereas Norris and Ennis (1989) call it “reasonable and reflective thinking that is focused upon deciding what to believe and do. Elder and Paul (2001, 2008) postulate that critical thinking is the ability of thinkers to take charge of their own thinking and develop sound criteria and standards for analyzing and assessing their own thinking. Maiorana (1992) emphasizes that the purpose of critical thinking is to achieve understanding, evaluate viewpoints, and solve problems. There is little essential difference in these definitions.

The purpose of practicing critical thinking in teaching foreign languages to students of technical specialization is to emphasize that learners should be able to attain English language competence in cause and effect, description, categorization, and differentiation, specifically for comparison and contrast. It also emphasizes the skills of skimming and scanning. Cognitive psychology highlights the understanding of the principles of temporal sequence, cause and effect, judgment, and choice. Critical pedagogy focuses on examining “the knowledge, theme, technique, text, or material, its internal structure and its connections to self and society”.

Critical thinking is an ongoing process in which all language learners must engage, regardless their language proficiency levels. Critical thinking involves the use of information, experience, and world knowledge in ways which allow students to seek alternatives, make inferences, pose questions, and solve problems, thereby signaling understanding in a variety of complex ways.

Critical thinking is described as the intellectual process of actively 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 exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness.

We understand critical thinking to be purposeful, self-regulatory judgment which results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and inference, as well as explanation of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, or contextual considerations upon which that judgment is based… The ideal critical thinker is habitually inquisitive, well-informed, trustful of reason, open-minded, flexible, fair-minded in evaluation, honest in facing personal biases, prudent in making judgments, willing to reconsider, clear about issues, orderly in complex matters, diligent in seeking relevant information, reasonable in the selection of criteria, focused in inquiry, and persistent in seeking results which are as precise as the subject and the circumstances of inquiry permit. (American Philosophical Association, 1990)

Examining different critical thinking definitions, one thing is agreed upon by most researchers: that is critical thinking includes not only critical thinking skills (containing both a process of thinking and thinking ability), involving analysis, interpretation, inference, explanation, evaluation and self-regulation but also critical thinking dispositions including clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, fairness. (Scriven & Paul, 1987).

Since in a traditional English reading class, students are mainly trained to enlarge vocabularies and then to improve reading comprehension ability, they are not so helpful. Whereas, there is a new way to teach English reading focusing on developing students’ critical thinking should be proposed. Students should be trained to be critical readers who can “question, organize, interpret, synthesize, and digest what they read”.

First, the reading texts chosen for teaching must arouse students’ interest and motivation, providing challenge to their thinking, and, of course, must be related to their specialization. Students have to be introduced to new and relevant ideas; they should be made to think about things they haven’t thought before. They should be helped to understand the way other people feel and think. If there are new lexical items, teachers should make sure if they worth learning at this stage and not too numerous. The reading materials’ vocabulary should be understandable by means of inference from the context. It should be possible to ask good questions to the text or devise other form of exploitation.

So critical reading emphasizes the active nature of reading. The readers are not simply receiving the facts and knowledge in the text, but try to form their own opinions and viewpoints about what they read from the texts. In language teaching critical means “both a preparedness to question and reflect on the meaning and uses of language” and it argues for “the need to draw attention to the ideological bases of discourses as they circulate both in everyday life and within specific texts”.

The reading class should train critical readers. Therefore, critical readers “question, organize, interpret, synthesize, and digest what they read.

On the basis of theory discussion and the writers’ own teaching experiences, the research proposes a five-step model to promote critical thinking in teaching English reading class.

First step: Pre-reading--Introduction of background or cultural knowledge to students. Before reading, teachers should ask students to read the title, the first or last paragraph or topic sentence of each paragraph. Then they ask the students to talk about their knowledge about the topic, predict the content. In this way, students’ desire to read the text will be aroused. This method is used by Robert Gagne in his nine instructional events. (http://tip.psychology.org/gagne.html).

Second step: comprehension of the text and explicating the main idea of each paragraph.

Understanding phrases and sentences of a text is still very important to foreign language learners. But this should not be done through teachers explaining word by word and sentence by sentence. A critical reading class should encourage students to guess or infer meaning by context clues. Teachers should encourage students to elicit the main idea of each paragraph based on their own thinking of the content.

Third step: analyzing the logic of the text. In this step, Paul’s Elements of Thought is a useful tool. The students should be encouraged to ask the following questions:

What is the key question the author is trying to answer?

What is the author’s fundamental purpose?

What is the author’s point of view with respect to the issue?

What assumptions is the author making in his or her reasoning?

What are the implications of the author’s reasoning?

What information does the author use in reasoning through this issue?

What are the most fundamental inferences or conclusions in the article?

What are the author’s most basic concepts?

Fourth step: evaluating the logic of the text.

As evaluation is one of the key critical thinking skills, assessing the logic of the reading text helps bringing reading and thinking ability to a higher level. In this stage, Paul’s Intellectual Standards is suggested to apply. The following questions help assess the logic of a text:

Does the author clearly state his or her meaning, or is the text vague, confused, or muddled in some way?

Is the author accurate in what he or she claims?

Is the author sufficiently precise in providing details and specifics when specifics are relevant?

Does the author introduce irrelevant material, thereby wandering from his/her purpose?

Does the author take us into the important complexities inherent in the subject, or is the writing superficial?

Does the author consider other relevant points of view, or is the writing overly narrow in its perspective?

Is the text internally consistent, or does the text contain unexplained contradictions?

Is the text significant, or is the subject dealt with in a trivial manner?

Does the author display fairness, or does the author take a one-sided, narrow approach?

In answering the questions in the third and fourth step, peer work, group discussions and other cooperative learning are classroom techniques that can be utilized by teachers. Some other analysts point out that cooperative learning enhances thinking processes. Through cooperative learning, students share their thoughts with each other and thus engage in an interactive approach to processing information. A key component of co-operating learning is the reflection by group members.

Fifth Step: Writing.

In this stage, after comprehending and evaluating of the text, students will be required to write summaries, commentaries, reading journals, create similar stories or composing similar style argument of their own. This step trains the students‟ higher level of thinking skills--synthesis and application. This stage has the language teaching theory explanation by Brown (2001), “Reading ability will best be developed in association with writing, listening and speaking activity. Even in those courses that may be labeled „reading‟, your goals will best be achieved by capitalizing on the interrelationship of skills, especially the reading-writing connection”.

In a world, in this model, first and second steps aim at text interpretation, third and fourth steps focus on text evaluation, the fifth one is on reader’s reaction. It concludes that this model throws a very different and efficient light upon teaching English reading. Of course, it needs to be improved in the practice. As a result, suggestions are greatly needed from all experts and scholars to make the model functional perfectly.

References:

1. American Philosophical Association. (1990). Critical Thinking: A Statement of Expert Consensus for Purposes of Educational Assessment and Instruction. "The Delphi Report," Committee on Pre-College Philosophy. ERIC Doc. No. ED 315 423.

2. Scriven, M. (1987). Critical for survival. National Forum, Vol 55, p. 9-12.

3. Ennis, R. (1989). Goals for a Critical Thinking/Reasoning Curriculum. Illinois Critical Thinking Project. University of Illinois, Champaign, IL.

4. http://tip.psychology.org/gagne.html.

5. Paul, R. & Elder, L. (2001, 2008).The miniature guide to critical thinking: Concepts and tools. Dillon Beach, CA: Foundation for Critical Thinking--How to read a paragraph Dillon Beach, CA: Foundation for Critical Thinking.