Critical thinking began to gain attention in the ESL/EFL contexts during the 1990s (Day, 2003). In the recent decades, efforts have been made by English language arts, ESL, EFL, and modern foreign language educators to integrate critical thinking skills into language curricula (Liaw, 2007). However, such effort was not met without reservations. Some educators questioned the validity of teaching critical thinking to L2 learners in non-western contexts (Atkinson, 1997; Davidson, 1998; Fox, 1994; Kobota, 1999; Stapleton, 2002). Atkinson (1997) stated that teaching critical thinking into nonnative speakers might be fraught with cultural problems. Unlike the individualism in the western culture which encouraged public debate, the collectivism in eastern
culture led to a suppression of individuality, causing Asian students to lack an individual voice as well as critical thinking skills (Stapleton, 2002).
Despite these doubts concerning CT instruction in a foreign language classroom, more researchers argued it is not adequate to consider Asian students less critical than their western counterparts just because they are hesitant to voice their opinions or express their criticism (Hongladarom, 2006; Le Ha, 2004). In fact, there is more to critical thinking than voicing one’s opinions. Davidson (1998) observed his Asian students and claimed that they seem more apt at other skills such as understanding multiple perspectives and resisting jumping to conclusions. L2 teachers have reasons, maybe even more than L1 teachers, to introduce to their students aspects of critical thinking (Davidson, 1998). Moreover, it is argued that EFL students usually come to L2 classroom with a variety of critical thinking skills developed in their L1. EFL students are able to learn to think critically in L2. Thus, EFL teachers are responsible for assisting their students to acquire critical thinking skills as they facilitate their language development (Liaw, 2007). Another argument for cultivating critical thinking in the EFL contexts is that higher-order thinking skills help enhance higher-order learning skills which in turn facilitate reaching higher levels of language proficiency (Renner, 1996). In a similar vein, Kabilan (2000) suggested that learners should use creative and critical thinking through the target language to become proficient in a language. In other words, learners cannot learn a language well by merely learning about the language; rather, they need to use the language, which implies using the target language to make meaning: to explain, reason, argue, and also to express the reasoning process. Depicting an ideal academic language program, Brown (2004) also proposed that the objectives of the curriculum should go beyond linguistic factors to develop critical thinking among learners. Since language development and thinking are closely related, critical thinking should be an integral part of an L2 curriculum and be
embedded in language learning tasks.
Researchers further proposed some teaching approaches to combine the learning of critical thinking with L2 learning. Brock (1986), for instance, suggested the use of questions in the language classroom when initiating topics in conversations addressed to non-native speakers of English. Kabilan (2000) proposed communicative pedagogy and recommended activities such as problem-posing and decision-making to guide leaners to voice their opinions, analyze the evidence, rationalize their reasons, and weigh their judgments. Furthermore, Long (2003) introduced a teaching activity in the EFL context to foster the skill of distinguishing facts from inferences through picture analysis to encourage students to express their opinions and provide reasons.
Several empirical studies also showed the feasibility and effectiveness of incorporating critical thinking instructions in EFL classrooms (Gao, 2016; Jantrasakul, 2012; Tang, 2016). To begin with, Jantrasakul (2012) integrated critical thinking-based lessons into Thai EFL classes at the tertiary level. The technique of posing thought-provoking questions regarding topics in reading materials was stressed in each lesson.
The findings showed that the critical thinking-oriented lessons empowered students’
language learning to a large extent and students were highly motivated as well. Then, Tang (2016) implemented a practical model in an EFL college intensive reading course in China to cultivate students’ critical thinking through a variety of teaching activities such as role play, case study, discussion teaching, and debate. These classroom activities involved students’ language skills as well as the ability to reflect, analyze, integrate, criticize and argue among different situations. Gao (2016) also aimed to cultivate Chinese EFL students’ critical thinking ability at the university level but through a different technique named simplified Model United Nations conference. The advantage of the simplified MUN conference is its integrating of listening, speaking, reading, and writing and also critical thinking skills into one course, and thus, students’ higher-order
thinking skills such as analyzing, evaluating and creating develop along with the improvement of their language competence.
Critical Thinking Instruction in Taiwan
Thinking Skills in the English Curriculum Guidelines
Since critical thinking is viewed as an essential skill in EFL classrooms, it has been made into national curriculum goals in many countries, including Taiwan. As the 2010 Guidelines for Senior High School English Curriculum published in Taiwan, critical thinking began to arouse much more attention among high school English teachers. The 2010 Guidelines consists of three basic thinking skills and five advanced thinking skills as follows.
Three basic thinking skills:
(1) Being able to compare, classify and sequence various information.
(2) Being able to identify the causal relationship between information based on the context.
(3) Being able to distinguish facts from opinions.
Five advanced thinking skills:
(1) Being able to analyze and synthesize the common points or conclusions among different pieces of information.
(2) Being able to apply the learned principles to new situations in order to solve problems.
(3) Being able to synthesize the existing information to predict the possible development.
(4) Being able to assess different pieces of information and propose reasonable judgments or suggestions.
(5) Being able to synthesize and organize related information, resources,
and demonstrate creativity.
The new Twelve-year Basic Education Curriculum Guidelines to be implemented in 2019 has some revolutionary changes compared to the previous one, one of which is to add “logical thinking, judgment-making and creativity” into the guidelines for English curriculum at the junior high school level. In other words, junior high school students in Taiwan are expected to acquire thinking skills through regular English curriculum.
The four thinking skills subsumed under “logical thinking, judgment-making and creativity” include:
(1) Being able to synthesize relevant information and make inferences.
(2) Being able to compare, categorize, and sequence two to three sources of information.
(3) Being able to identify the causal relationship between information based on the context.
(4) Being able to distinguish facts from opinions from the explicit clues in a discourse such as “I think…” and “maybe”.
For the first thinking skill, students are expected to learn to infer the meaning of words or sentences and the main ideas from the learned information in the text. The second thinking skill refers to the ability to compare, categorize, or sequence the main concepts related to the topic from one single text or between texts. The third thinking skill indicates the ability to figure out the causes of events or identify the causal relationship between statements from the implicit or explicit information provided in the text. For the fourth thinking skill, students ought to distinguish facts from opinions based on the clues provided in the discourse such as “I think…” and “maybe”. The above-mentioned thinking skills, which were absent in the previous guidelines in Nine-year Integrated Curriculum (2008), are now expected to be acquired by junior high school students.