Are your students still passive learners? Do you want to develop their critical thinking during the English class? Are your students able to assess their own learning?
A well-known fact is that students during their school years do not achieve sufficient language skills to understand lectures, comprehend texts books, participate in class discussions or generate an accurate written work. The development of metacognitive strategies can help them organize, plan and make decisions about their own learning. This development is, of course, teachers´ responsibility to get acquired by the use of new strategies, so students will be expected to think, to communicate and to continue their learning by themselves in and outside the classroom.
Who are critical thinkers?
They are learners who develop a mental and communicative process about grammar, discourse, strategic (negotiation of meaning), and social-cultural competence in order to reach the target language.
Numan (1984, p 45) states critical thinkers interact to use the language target progress more rapidly through habitual practices and oral interaction as much as possible.
What is Critical Thinking?
«Critical thinking is the identification and evaluation of evidence to guide decision making. A critical thinker uses broad in-depth analysis of evidence to make decisions and communicate his/her beliefs clearly and accurately.»
According to Edward Glaser (1941) “the ability to think critically involves: a) an attitude of being disposed to consider in a thoughtful way the problems and subjects that come within the range of one´s experiences; b) the knowledge of the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning; c) some skill in applying those methods.
Which skills are developed through critical thinking?
Among the skills of critical thinking we can mention:
-Analyzing
-Reasoning
-Evaluating
-Problem solving
-Decision Making
Through the use of critical activities students can also learn how to reach to conclusions, and self- assess their performance in class.
Interactive classes could be the major factor for the development of critical thinking. Based on Bruffee (1984) ideas, people who think well must first have the ability to communicate well and reason within a learning community. Therefore, group work, pair work and project work are the processes that enable our students becoming critical thinkers. As well they also develop collaborative strategies that give them the opportunity to participate effectively and listen or accept others´ ideas.
Which are critical thinkers competences?
Critical thinking calls for the ability to:
•Recognize problems, to find means for meeting those problems.
•Understand the importance of prioritization in problem solving.
•Gather pertinent and relevant information.
•Recognize unstated assumptions and values.
•Comprehend and use language with accuracy, clarity, and discernment.
•Interpret data and evaluate arguments.
•Recognize the existence of logical relationships between propositions.
•Draw conclusions and generalizations.
•Put to test the conclusions and generalizations at which one arrives
•Reconstruct one’s patterns of beliefs on the basis of wider experience
•Render accurate judgments about specific things and qualities in everyday life.
Strategies for integrating the four skills in the development of critical thinkers.
Critical thinkers focus on developing integrated skills engage to use the language to communicate in order to achieve at outcome other than that of learning a specified feature of the L2. Their skills are wider because students have the opportunities to express their ideas and solving problems in writing and spoken activities. Besides, these activities/tasks are judged by themselves in the real life because they can negotiate meaning, solve a particular problem or maintain social relationship and friendship.
The main point to be established is the need of integrating all the skills in every class/hour. They should not be practiced separately if teachers want to teach and develop authentic communication. To fulfill with the integration of the four skills teachers need to re-design their programs and adapt real life problems to the environment of the class to be solved through the use of the language.
Secondly, a feedback system could be established for all the skills; this feedback emphasizes what students did well and what they need to improve, of course this should be determined individually in an oral way, so in this way students will realize about the amount of responsibility they have in their own learning and how they can help themselves. They can also have a real communicative practice with the teacher.
Working with journals encourages students to use meta-cognitive learning strategies; they will feel motivated to make positive changes in their behavior as well as in their learning process. Furthermore, they identify their own problem and find out possible solutions to it. The process may have statements as:
– I have learned:
– I didn´t understand:
– I like knowing about:
– I don´t care about:
– My strengthens in this topic are:
– My difficulties are:
– I need help in:
Finally, a peer review activity enables students help to each other, discuss their difficulties and achievements, know how to receive positive critiques and reach the goal of becoming independent learners.
Diagram of a Model of critical thinking:
Critical thinking in learning:
To become a skilled learner is to become a self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinker, who has given assent to rigorous standards of thought and mindful command of their use. Skilled learning of a discipline requires that one respect the power of it, as well as its, and one’s own, historical and human limitations.
Critical Thinking Classroom Exercises
Text analysis:
During this activity students need to organize pieces from a story in the correct order; they will make up a title for it as well as write a new ending. This exercise provides students the opportunity to think logically, to solve problems and relate the events to their own previous experiences.
Socratic thinking:
It is a process of questioning hypothetical problems so thinking would be triggered, the idea is to challenge students to answer questions analysis between facts and assumptions and get to the best possible solution according to the situation.
Think Out-of–the-box:Make students draw a specified number of dots and then tell them to join the dots making creative figures with a determined number of lines.
What if you were:
Make students imagine and characterize a person, who could be a famous are popular one. Give a student a hypothetical event and ask them to react as if they were that know person. These kind of activities will help students understand others reactions and think in different ways.
Conclusion
Students who develop awareness in their learning process and keep great expectations in their improvement of communicative skills are those who have developed a critical thinking; because of this they will feel confident during the acquiring of knowledge, be enthusiastic learners and achieve success in their studies.
Bibliography
* Oak M. ,”Developing Critical Thinking Skills”, Wikipedia, http://www.buzzle.com/articles/developing-critical-thinking-skills.htm
(read January 21st, 2012)
* Shaila M. and Trudell B., “From Passive Learners to Critical Thinkers: Preparing EFL Students for University Success”; English Teaching Forum #3, 2010.
* The Critical Thinking Community, “Defining Critical Thinking”,
http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/defining-critical-thinking/766, (read
January 21st,2012)
* http://www.criticalthinking.com/company/articles/critical-thinking-definition.jsp
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking
* http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/how-to-study-and-learn-part-one/513
* David, N(1999) Second Language Teaching & Learning, Boston, Massachusetts.
Extra Task CALL
Group 2
– Elba Margarita Mosquera.
– Lucía del Carmen Troya.
– María José Troya.