Developing critical reading skills for first year students in English department, college of foreign languages, Vietnam national university, Hanoi

Developing critical reading skills for first year students in English department, college of foreign languages, Vietnam national university, Hanoi

Part 1 introduction1 Background to the study and statement of the problem

1.1 Critical thinking and critical reading skills in the Age of Information

In the Age of Information, people are facing up with the information overload which canbe both an advantage and a big threat It is, therefore, necessary for people especiallyyoungsters to have good ability of not being drowned in the ocean of information.Accordingly, reading, which is the most popular means of processing information, shouldbe taken into account Among the amount of information needed, the questions of what toread, how to read effectively and what to believe are worthy of readers’ consideration Insuch a situation, critical reading is an essential skill which is described by Harris andHodges (1981) as

a process of making judgments in reading, evaluating relevance and adequacy of what is read, an act of reading in which a questioning attitude, logical analysis and inference are used to judge the worth of what is reading according to an establish standard

Critical reading which is significant to EFL students for mastering critical reading skillswill provide students with the ‘right tool’ (Milan, 1995), in short term, to enhance theirprocess of studying at university and, in long term, to serve them well for the rest of theirlife

A remarkable number of students and teachers, however, does not have in-depthknowledge of critical reading, what its elements are and how to develop it They are noteven aware of the role of critical reading in the teaching and learning process This leadsto quite lots of problems concerning behaviorism, self discovery and other cognitivematters The lack of a full awareness of critical reading may result in not only teachers’clueing in and students’ knowledge acquiring but also curriculum design or teachers andstudents interaction in classroom, etc.

In the history of pedagogy, methodology, psychology and humanism, a variety ofresearch on critical thinking and its related problems and solutions have been conducted.In a very humble way, this research is aimed to follow the founding fathers of the field tobone up the most basic knowledge about critical thinking skill.

Next, because of the limitation of time as well as of the restrains on reference sources, theresearcher will not cover up every aspect of critical thinking but just critical thinking inrelation to the effective reading of first year students in English Department, College ofForeign Languages (CFL), Vietnam National University (VNU) As applying criticalthinking skills in reading, students will become more effective readers who are capable ofapplying the given skills to achieve academic success in their language learning

1.2 An overview of reading course in English Division 1, English Department, CFL,VNU

1.2.1 Course objectives

At the end of the course, first year students will be able to understand various level discourses such as magazine articles, letters, stories, etc and apply basic readingstrategies including locating specific information (scanning), extracting main ideas(skimming), dealing with unfamiliar words, understanding author’s attitude,understanding text organization, understanding referencing devices and understandingtext inferences Besides, the ability to deal with the following types of exercises such astrue/ false, multiple choice, gap – fill, matching and open-ended questions and theability to build up their background knowledge and vocabulary range through readingpassages will also be attained.

average-To develop critical reading skills, it is very important to set up a range of objectives whichaims at developing thinking process in reading skills In reality, out of seven objectives ofReading 2 mentioned above, only the last four ones relate to critical reading skills: understanding author’s attitude, understanding text organization, understanding

referencing devices and understanding text inferences However, the activities and tasks used in the course do not help students meet those objectives (The analyses of the activities and tasks will be made in the analysis of the material from page 3-8.)

1.2.2 The syllabus (A detailed syllabus is provided in Appendix 1)

The major strength of the syllabus is that it gives clear instructions to teachers andstudents on pieces of work they are expected to do every week This will help them bewell prepared for class and that would increase the efficiency of teaching and learning.Also, the syllabus saves the first week as an orientation week which is carried out invarious forms such as formal lectures, discussions, debates, story telling, text reading orsimply informal talks The benefits of orientation activities are: 1 creating opportunitiesfor students and teachers and students themselves to get to know each other to exchangeexperiences, attitudes and opinions 2 orienting students towards college study methodsin general and effective ways to learn the four language skills in particular Suchpreparation has been proved to respond to actual needs of students during their early daysat college.

In addition, the syllabus gives space for the teachers to design or collect further readingby themselves Nevertheless, it is not an easy task due to time restraints and the lack ofreference sources

In the syllabus, there are three revision weeks Traditionally, teachers give students thetests of the previous years to do as a way of practicing reading under time pressure anddeveloping examination skills In fact, this activity is relevant if the biggest purpose of thecourse is merely to get good marks in the exams However, if developing critical thinkingand critical reading skills for students are also the aims of the syllabus, then morethought-provoking tasks and activities would have to be included

1.2.3 The critique of the material

‘Practice your reading skills’ is the only in-use-textbook which is designed, adapted andcombined by a group of teachers in the Division The use of only one course book in thewhole semester may reduce the chances for students to experience different view points,beliefs and values, build up their own knowledge, reflect their attitudes, assumptions andeven prejudices through comparing and examining which inevitably may bring about thebiased, subjective way of thinking being the killer of critical thinking Therefore,introducing appropriate materials as supplementary to the main textbook is one of theresearcher’s tasks in this study.

Followings is a brief overview of major strengths and weaknesses of the materiala The strengths

Comparing to the course objectives the syllabus is quite suitable The core course book‘Practice your reading skills’ is a basic reading for pre-intermediate students of English.Through 24 non-specialized theme-based units of the book and several extra activities, thereading course is aimed to develop the following reading skills for the students includinggetting the gist of a topic, drawing key concepts out of a reading, practicing readingstrategies, learning how to use some clues for understanding

Besides, it also fosters the interaction between the readers and the texts The core bookcontains informative, relevant and versatile texts, fun activity types, and variedvocabulary development materials Specially, there are numerous activities designed todevelop students’ communicative competence, i.e the activities provide opportunities toincorporate listening, speaking and writing into the language lessons

In the book, the activities which are at low thinking levels in Bloom’s Taxonomy areconducive to individual, pair and group work and are designed not to teach students toread but to guide students to practice reading skills As a result, the book can be used bothfor self-study and in the class room.

The topics were well - chosen to fit the themes of other three skills so students canpractice the language again and again when speaking, listening, writing and reading Thetopics are interesting and relevant They can be practical and real as in ‘LanguageLearning’, ‘Jobs and Career’, etc but they can still be imaginative and brilliant as in‘Achievers’ and ‘Science’.

In general, the book can meet the general goal of the division for improving students’reading skills Nonetheless, during the teaching and learning process, ‘Practice yourreading skills’ has revealed a lot of problems

b The weaknesses

‘Practice your reading skills’ is the only in-use-textbook which is designed, adapted andcombined by a group of teachers in the Division The use of only one course book in thewhole semester may reduce the chances for students to experience different view points,beliefs and values, build up their own knowledge, reflect their attitudes, assumptions andeven prejudices through comparing and examining which inevitably may bring about thebiased, subjective way of thinking being the killer of critical thinking Therefore,

introducing appropriate materials as supplementary to the main textbook is one of theresearcher’s tasks in this study.

The first apparent problem is the gap between theoretical objectives and reality Being oneof the four language courses in Division 1, reading must fit the objectives of the

curriculum which attempts to reach the standard of the first level set by CambridgeUniversity Local Examinations Syndicate That means after finishing the first year,

students will reach the standard of PET level (pre-intermediate) However, the level isonly suitable for listening and speaking skills Many first year students are so good atreading that they can easily finish the First Certificate reading texts Therefore, it is a realchallenge to design a material that is able to fit the curriculum as well as students’ ability,interests and demands The book must contain multi-level reading texts from beginning tofirst certificate, from simple to more complicated Within this light, the content, is notcohesive because some texts and exercises are quite easy while some others are quitedifficult and more advanced

To fix the problem, teachers have to be flexible when using the material in class Theyhave to design some extra activities and questions for the simple reading texts andsimplify the difficult tasks by helping students with new words, giving the instructionscarefully or asking students to work in group where strong students can help weaker oneswith the difficult tasks The teachers can also classify the tasks by giving the morechallenging tasks to stronger students and less difficult ones to weaker students

The second problem area is the content of the material The text types in the material arequite variable, from short stories, specialized articles, reports, reviews, letters,advertisements to diagrams or pie charts The reading texts are quite different in level ofdifficulties and complication and used mostly to present or practice new language,general comprehension and information-finding To examine the content of the materialcarefully, the researcher has based on the two following categories: task types, stages ofreading and possibility of combining with other skills (listening, speaking and writing).That action helps bring about the opportunities to comment on the criticalness of thematerial which will be discussed in the later part.

From what is shown in detailed syllabus and the list of task types and text types in eachstage of reading as analyzed by the writer (for details, see Appendix 2 ), it is easy to makesome comments as follow:

+ In ‘Practice your reading skills’ many units lack pre-reading and/or post-readingstages which seems against the attempt to develop critical reading skills gradually throughthe stages.

+ The activities for the two stages are not diversified Mainly, students are askedto discuss/write about related issues after reading which leads to frequent practices ofspeaking / writing skills but the neglect of listening.

+ The instructions of the activities are not clear enough

+ The material is not cohesive as there are some parts with much more criticalcontent (Unit 21 – Art) than any other parts Besides, some instructions are so detailedthat they become wordy

- ‘Criticalness’ (the portion or the percentage of being critical of the content of a material)To examine the criticalness of reading material, the researcher used three following

criteria as suggested by Spiegel (1990:410) content validity, transfer potential andamount of reinforcement.

Content validity refers to how well the materials deliver what they promise or whether

they are true to the rationale or theory that the materials purport to follow To assert that amaterial is critical means to prove its promotion of reflective thinking and strategicplanning The core book of the course, nevertheless, does not absolutely meet thatdemand While being critical means being well-reasoned rather than having quickanswers, along with some higher level (intermediate) tasks that do not have obvioussolutions, there are numerous situations when students can easily find the answers to thequestions Mostly, the material does not require students to pause, reflect, consider and‘try out more than one hypothesis or attend to several factors before settling upon ananswer’ (For the sample reading task of week two, see Appendix 3)

Normally, the six main comprehensive questions are being successful tools for teachers todevelop scanning skills of students Yet, in term of critical thinking development, they donot meet the intellectual demands of high level cognition skills and can only be

categorized as Right There QARs whose answers are obvious in the text To answer this

type of questions, students only have to use low level cognitive skills

If it is to develop students’ critical reading skills, the book needs a lot of furtherimprovements Among all ten units analyzed, there is only one passage in unit 21 – Artsthat contains the ‘criticalness’ The activities require students not only to comprehend butalso dig down into the author’s points, the referencing devices and the organization andpurposes of the ideas The tasks given out also have a very close relationship with othercritical and communication skills beside simple reading Doing the tasks, students have towrite, reflect, express and compare

Transfer potential involves the manner in which the students practices or uses the task of

interest The second criterion, which involves exploring right or wrong answers,explaining divergent answers and identifying clue words, asks about three aspects:practicing, awareness and acceptance In the first place, students must be givenopportunities to practice the transferring skills To beginners, this stage must becontrolled by the teacher who has the responsibility of stating the connection between thetext and other non verbal materials Besides, students are also instructed to know where totransfer and how to transfer In order to have a detailed plan to transfer, the materialshould be systematic and well-instructive Yet, the material lacks both features as it wasdesigned without a consistent format and united language proficiency Some tasks are tooeasy, some others are too complicated Some types of exercises are too long and some arerepeated Certain instructions are even incorrect in grammar and not clear enough tounderstand Moreover, the connection between the texts and other skills is not clear Thatleads to the lack of transferring the tasks and the knowledge

Amount of reinforcement is the provision of opportunities to apply new understanding in

meaningful and interesting contexts This is considered more important for criticalreading than other reading tasks To obtain this criterion, the material must be designedwith variety of activities to develop analyzing skills, determining sequence, etc withvariety of activities Some reading materials in the world which are accredited as goodcritical reading materials must have three to five activities accompanying with one unit.The material, unfortunately, does not provide any other resource pack for the teacher aswell as students All the time spent in class is for students to do the exercises and teachersto correct the answers If the teachers want to provide students with more extra tasks theywill have to design themselves This work, however, is rather difficult for beginningteachers due to the restraint on time, money and professional supervision.

One more thing about the material is that it has no teacher’s manuals It is true that theteachers’ instructions, methods and behaviors play a very significant role in developingstudents critical reading skills The teacher’s manuals, therefore, will be a goodprofessional help as they do not only bring in transparency matters for the lessons but theguidelines that assist teachers in many ways.

1.2.4 Teachers

Conventionally, all teachers in Division 1 are young which presumably means they do nothave much experience in teaching in particular and in life in general However, they dopossess certain advantages such as being enthusiastic, active, ready to apply new methodsor think in new ways and adaptive to different situations They are also very hard-working The evidence is that they were continuously working very hard to produce allthe materials used in the reading course.

Another notable point is that all teachers in Division 1 have graduated from CFL, VNUand many of them experienced the same non-cognition oriented reading materials as wellas a curriculum with no subject named critical thinking when they were students Only afew ones graduating from fast track classes had chances to develop good thinking skillsthrough their exposure to a learning environment where critical thinking is promoted

1.2.5 Students

Generally, at high school, every week students only have one forty five minute-readingclass and reading materials are poor in terms of quality The reading skills which are paidmost attention to in the English syllabus at high school are scanning, skimming, guessingthe meaning of new words and inferring Not only for reading for speaking, writing andlistening skills as well, thought-provoking activities are seldom found in their textbook It is obvious that most first year students of English Department are well selected, andeager to learn since they all have to go through a very demanding entrance examination.Among the four language skills taught in the first year, reading seems to be the strongestskill for most students because it was more frequently practiced when they were still atschool to serve the main purpose of passing the university entrance examination.However, once they have to learn how to read critically, reading is no longer too easy.Usually in the orientation week, first year students have chances to express their own

opinions about reading and they all agree that reading is very important not only inEnglish learning but also in any content class English is used as a medium Yet, hardly dothey know about how to develop reading skill as a cognitive and communicative skill Aswell, they do not know how to combine different strategies in reading The effectivenessof learning reading skills, therefore, remains a big challenge for a large number of firstyear students.

2 Aims of the study

The research aims specifically at (1) investigating the attitudes of first year students andteachers toward critical reading; (2) exploring the problems that students encounter instudying and applying critical reading; (3) offering suitable teaching strategies indeveloping critical reading skills for first year students.

3 Scope of the study

Being an action research on first year students’ and teachers’ critical reading skills, the

study is confined to critical thinking skill in reading of first year students in English

Department, CFL, VNU

In other words, the research will help raise the awareness of first year students in theuniversity towards the necessity of building up and developing critical reading skills.With the manageable population and variants of fifty students and ten teachers in Division1, English Department, CFL, VNU, the research will hopefully contribute to theimprovement of teaching and learning methods as well as the advancement of thestudents’ cognitive ability

4 Organization of the paper

Apart from Introduction (Part 1) and Conclusions (Part 3), the research is divided intothree chapters:

- Chapter 1 presents Literature Review It gives an overview of most updated theories oncritical thinking, critical reading and issues related to teaching critical reading

- Chapter 2 deals with Methodology which demonstrates the data collection instrumentsand the procedure of the experiment

- Chapter 3 namely Data analysis, Discussion of major findings and Recommendationsreports the results of the investigation into the reality of teaching and learning criticalreading in Division 1, CFL, VNU In this chapter, answers to the two research questionsare also given The answers are also the major findings which help the research find apractical basis for further recommendations

5 Method of the study

This will be an action research which provides many opportunities for the researcher totest the theories as well as applications in reality As a result, the most appropriate waysof developing critical reading skills will be reached.

- Research questions

1 What are the students attitudes to critical thinking and critical reading skills?’

2 What are the problems first year students face when developing critical thinking ingeneral and critical reading in particular?

3 How do critical thinking and critical reading strategies help to improvestudents critical thinking and critical reading?’

- Participants

The participants includetwo groups of 07E students Division 1, English Department, CFL,VNU which are the subjects of the study and ten teachers of Division 1, EnglishDepartment who are the respondents.

Data collection instruments contain semi-structured interviews, observation and experiment

part 2 development

This chapter reviews the most basic knowledge of critical thinking, critical reading, therelationship between critical thinking and critical reading and different aspects ofteaching critical reading

1 An overview of critical thinking

1.1 The definition of critical thinking

Terminologically, critical thinking has been defined in various ways Chance (1986 : 6)defined critical thinking as ‘the ability to analyze facts, generate and organize ideas,defend opinions, make comparisons, draw inferences, evaluate arguments and solveproblems’ while Mertes (1991 : 24) characterized critical thinking as ‘a conscious anddeliberate process which is used to interpret or evaluate information and experiences witha set of reflective attitudes and abilities that guide thoughtful beliefs and actions’ Such adifference results from the continuous changes in psychology and philosophy theories In1996, Scriven and Paul described critical thinking as

the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully 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 (p 12)

Though sounding relatively similar in some ways with the two definitions given byChance(1986) and Mertes (1991), this comprehensive definition got much attention fromscholars of the field because of its clarity and validity To be more exact, Scriven and Pauljust figured out the natural feature of critical thinking as an active and practice-requiredthinking process including distinctive cognitive behaviors

In Vietnam, many people tend to have a negative view toward the common meaning ofthe word ‘critical’ For them, if someone is critical, he is likely to question, to judgeseverely and ready to find faults about things and people around Therefore, in theiropinion, critical thinkers seem doubtful and never satisfied However, the concept“critical” is more widely known in the modern world today as “giving careful, exactevaluation and judgments” (Cambridge Advanced Learners’ Dictionary) Thoseevaluation and judgments result from inquisitive questions and doubt which are principaltools and motivation for critical thinkers to seek truth Accordingly, the quality ofthinking and doing is heightened In this regard, the meaning of the word “critical” isdefinitely interpreted with a positive sense.

However, critical thinking does not assure that one will always reach either the truth orcorrect conclusions Such cases happen when one does not have all the relevantinformation, or makes unjustified inferences, uses inappropriate concepts, or may be avictim of prejudices or biases Then, “having a critical spirit is as important as thinkingcritically” (Norris, 1985: 31) The critical spirit does not only consist of the ability to

think critically but also accepts the fact that reality can be much more difficult ordifferent and the solutions can be all wrong, then the effort to search for new solutionswill always be encouraged The critical spirit requires one to consider all aspects of life,to reckon not only one's own but others’ thinking, and “to act on the basis of what one hasconsidered when using critical thinking skills.” Norris (1985:44)

Naturally, critical thinking is skeptical When people think something over, they askquestions about its validity, reliability as well as possibility Just like what Shakespearestated ‘to survive means to be skeptical’, skepticism helps things move on and develop Ifthings are easily accepted without questioning or testing, they will never be renewed,upgraded or renovated

Conventionally, critical thinking is considered different from other kinds of thinking suchas lateral thinking (a way of solving a problem by thinking about it imaginatively andoriginally and not using traditional or expected methods), creative thinking (putting facts,concepts and principles together in new and original ways) and reflective thinking(carefully analyzing thinking) Some experts put critical thinking in a parallel andcorresponding position with other thinking skills The research conductor, however,reckons that critical thinking is overall moderator of almost every other thinking skill.That means a critical thinker is accomplished in the flexible use of cognition skills Inother words, critical thinking not only helps improve people’s cognitive skills but alsohelps them improve their adaptability and flexibility to master their own lives To be moreconcrete, a critical thinker will be the one who knows when, where, why and how to useone, some or all of the thinking skills effectively

To sum up, critical thinking refers to the active, conscious mental process which employsgeneral principles and procedure of thinking to seek truth and judgments.

1.2 The elements of critical thinking

The question of what the elements of critical thinking are remains controversialdepending on different research criteria The classification given in this part is based uponmost commonly accepted categorization of critical thinking elements in literature In thisregard, critical thinking is comprised of two basic complex elements: the cognitive skillsand the affective dispositions.

1.2.1 Cognitive skills

In the history of research on education and pedagogy, various ways to categorizecognitive skills have been explored Among all, the most common way is to base on thetaxonomy which was first developed in 1956 by Benjamin Bloom and revised in 2001 byAnderson, & Krathwohl According to the taxonomy, within three overlapping domains:the cognitive, psychomotor and affective, the thinking process is divided into six levels ina hierarchical order from the lowest to the highest one

The first level is knowledge (including facts, ideas, terms, concepts, etc.) which is

obtained through communication, observation, senses and so on According towww.eduscapes.com, knowledge level may contain collecting, defining, describing,identifying, showing, naming, recording, reading, copying, quoting and selecting which

are to serve the purpose of getting knowledge including dates, events, places, vocabulary,key ideas, diagram, etc

The second level namely comprehension (involving associating, comparing,

distinguishing, extending, interpreting, predicting, etc.) demonstrates understanding offacts and ideas, inferring causes and consequences or transferring meaning.

Application, the third level, is problem solving by applying, classifying, changing,

relating, reporting, etc acquired knowledge, facts, techniques and rules in a differentway.

The forth level, analysis is the breakdown of information into parts to examine and try to

understand the structure of the information

Synthesis which is the fifth level is the process of mingling all possible opinions.

The last level, evaluation, is judgment making judgments about the quality of work

basing on a set of criteria.

Figure 1 - Bloom’s Taxonomy about six levels of cognition

Incorporating Bloom’s Taxonomy into critical thinking process, the elements or the stepsof critical thinking can be categorized as follows:

Knowledge (Fact Acquisition - Observations, Reflections and Communication): Peoplecan obtain series of information through the four communication skills as well aswatching and reflecting

Comprehension (Interpretation) or Understanding Knowledge includes fact inferencesand analysis From the series of facts or from the facts that remain undiscovered peoplecan make inferences This process of forming opinions or guessing that something is true

depends on the knowledge that one may have before hand This element reveals a fact thatthose who are knowledgeable are normally good critical thinkers Analysis refers to theacts of examining and breaking information into parts by identifying motives or causes;making inferences and finding evidence to support generalizations

Application invloves assumptions and analysis In assumptions, people judge theinferences they have so they can come to the assumptions Different assumptions lead todifferent opinions which decide the actions or reactions Opinions can lead to argumentsthat will be used to challenge others’ The next level is analysis that helps people see andorganize parts of a piece of information and recognize hidden meaning and identifycomponents The analysis at this level differs from that at Comprehension level as itfocuses on the meaning rather than form of a text.

Synthesizing is the act of mixing different ideas, opinions and influences to make newones The new idea can be subjective, objective, equivalent or improper, original orunoriginal depending on the quality of the ideas taken from the previous stages One

popular question asked in the level is ‘what if’ which is used to validate the situations

after new ideas are created Useful activities occurred in the level are combining,composing, creating, adapting, reinforcing, generalizing and designing

Evaluating is the step which encourages students to make judgments according to a set ofcriteria without giving out real wrong or right answers Evaluation also includes analysisand recommending The analysis at this higher level is different from that in theComprehension and Application level In Comprehension, people analyze separate piecesof information while in this step they judge the assumption to identify all sides of theargument before final judgments are made After ideas are critiqued, recommendationswill be made Those recommendations will be analyzed continuously and theimprovements will always be suggested

In sum, as Bloom defines the first three levels of his taxonomy as lower order thinkinglevels, critical thinking (higher-order thinking skills) concerns the top three levels:

analysis, synthesis and evaluation which are obviously associated with a wide range of

complex cognitive skills and sub-skills.

1.2.2 Critical thinking dispositions

Naturally, dispositions are particular types of characters that a person has Describingone’s dispositions is to mention his/her habitual ways of acting In social psychology,dispositions are conceived as an attitude or attitudinal tendency which plays the role asthe orientation of people’s thinking and behaviors

In productive thinking, there are two kinds of dispositions: advantageous dispositionswhich have supportive influences on the growth of thinking and disadvantageousdispositions which are obstacles to the development of thinking As there is aninsurmountable number of dispositions as indicated in critical thinking related literature,only four most typical affective dispositions are taken for illustration

Advantageous dispositionsDisadvantageous dispositions

- open-mindedness: Critical thinking must

be built basing on the open mind to newpoint of views Considering a variety ofpossible view points or perspectives andremaining open to alternativeinterpretations are two out of manyconditions to activate critical thinking

- self awareness: critical thinkers are

thinkers who are aware of their own valueson which they base their judgments.Critical thinkers have the ability to identifytheir values and the ways they evaluate thesurroundings depend on whether they sharethe values with others or not.

- egocentricity: egocentricity is the inability

and unwillingness to consider other viewpoints It results in a refusal to accept newideas and facts It leads to the circumstancethat people think the way they see things isexactly the way things are while in reality,‘seeing is not believing’.

- conservatism: conservatives tend to

oppose changes which they argue onlycause a breakdown in traditional beliefs andstructures If someone is conservative, hethinks that what has worked well should beassumed to be good enough to workforever That leads to the passiveness andreluctance in thinking

Table 1 – Advantageous and disadvantageous dispositions

As elements of critical thinking, advantageous dispositions are terminologically calledcritical thinking dispositions Obviously, there is a close relationship between criticalthinking skills and critical thinking dispositions In other words, a person with severaladvantageous characteristics such as being open-minded, analytical, inquisitive, confidentin reasoning etc is, in most cases, a good critical thinker

1.2.3 The basic differences between a good critical thinker and a poor critical thinker

In literature on critical thinking, many scholars make a clear distinction between criticalthinkers and non-critical thinkers (Sandy,1997:120; Driscoll, 2000:86) However, theresearcher would adopt a neutral view that almost everyone has more or less the hiddenpotential cognitive skills and dispositions required of critical thinking The only thing thatmatters is the levels of critical thinking among people are various due to the differentlevels of awareness, knowledge and frequencies of practicing those skills

The following table synthesized from various sources shows the features that help todistinguish between a good critical thinker and a poor one.

• is supposed to have a sense of curiosity.• is naturally skeptical.

• is an active person who always askquestions and analyze information In otherwords, a good critical thinker is eager tounderstand things thoroughly

• is an objective person who never imposes

• is not willing to learn new things.

is a person who considers everything‘wrong’ or ‘right’, ‘black’ or ‘white’ Poorcritical thinkers take a simplistic view ofthe world They do not view the world indifferent points and even they do not acceptor realize that others have different points

his own values and perceptions onsurrounding things

• is able to reject incorrect and irrelevantinformation and suspend judgments evenafter a hard time if collecting facts andproof

• is open for new things.

• is someone who always challenges his ownbeliefs and wants to search for new ones

of view from theirs

• is blind to the variety and diversity.

• always puts his prejudices, biases, habits orpurposes the first and the only validity.

Table 2 – The differences between a good critical thinker and a poor critical thinker

Usually, poor critical thinkers apply some types of thinking that can be hindrances tocritical thinking According to Ennis (1992: 89), those types of thinking may take theform of:

Habitual thinking which is based on past practices without considering current data.

Doing this type of thinking, a person gets stuck in the rut and can not break the old habitsand try new methods

Brainstorming which make thinkers say whatever comes to mind without evaluation.

People thinking this way are easily influenced by their assumptions Assumptions can bequite useful, especially assumptions that are foundation of all the belief and values likeaxioms in mathematics Yet, assumptions can be very dangerous if they are built onfalse initial premises To think critically, one must identify his assumptions and considertheir justification before presenting the ideas.

Prejudicial thinking Prejudicial thinkers gather evidences to support a particular position

without questioning the position itself A thinker of this type holds his very ownprejudices which are considered major obstacles to his critical thinking Prejudices springfrom subjective factors such as race, religion, class, ethnicity or gender To be a criticalthinker does not mean one must leave all of his ideas It means one should know whetherthe opinions are right or wrong, suitable or unsuitable and adjust if necessary.

Emotive thinking which responds to the emotion of a message rather than the content.

Emotive thinkers always base on their sense rather than the sensibility This way ofthinking goes completely further from logical and intellectual thinking.

1.3 Critical thinking in learning

1.3.1 Critical thinking in learning

As a saying goes ‘To learn is to think To think poorly is to learn poorly To think well isto learn well’, critical thinking plays a very important role in learning as it is in closeconnection with all aspects of learning The limited scope of this study does not allow theresearcher to go into all of the aspects but just three prominent ones namely learner’sdispositions, questioning and the making or arguments.

a Critical thinking and learner’s dispositions

The relationship between critical thinking and learners’ dispositions are the cause andeffect relationship In view of Ferrett (1997), a critical thinker has the following affectivedispositions:

- is able to admit a lack of understanding or information As mentioned earlier, criticalthinking can not always lead to clear and obvious conclusions Critical thinkers have toaccept the fact that some things may remain mysterious and will be revealed later - has a sense of curiosity Having that kind of sense, the thinker will always want to findout about the new things He may ask questions and cling to the pursuit of the answers - is interested in finding new solutions The desire to search for new things refreshes andfosters oneself If one is satisfied with one solution only, he will not be thirsty for the newones, which may lead to the intellectual inferiority

- is willing to examine beliefs, assumptions, and opinions and weighs them against facts.A critical thinker suspends judgment until all facts have been gathered and considered.He looks for evidence and proof to support assumption and beliefs He is able to rejectinformation that is incorrect or irrelevant and is able to adjust opinions when new factsare found As a result, the best solution will be given.

- listens willingly and carefully to others and is able to give feedback Listening to othershelps a person to understand more not only about his own values but others’ also.Comparing those values assists people find out the ones which are most appropriate forthem

- sees that critical thinking is a lifelong process If a person wants to be a good criticalthinker, he will have to practice regularly

Those dispositions are not only affective when one is learning They are very helpful inhis whole life because they are necessary qualities and skills that people need in solvingproblems not only in learning but also in his life time

b Critical thinking and questioning

Critical thinking and questioning have an interrelated relationship To think critically,people have to ask questions to comprehend, analyze or evaluate, i.e asking questions is apart of critical thinking, while to be able to make good questions, different elements ofcritical thinking must be involved Obviously, one criterion for a thinker to be critical is toknow how to ask pertinent questions which help to examine problems closely and get themost out of facts, information and proof.

Basically, questions have two main functions in learning: to check students’ output and‘to involve students in interaction.’ (Wu, 1993:50) In critical sense, questions have somemore roles as to provoke and examine different types of thinking, beliefs, opinions andattitudes Moreover, questions serve as an effective tool to discover the truth as beingcalled “a truism” (Gall,1990:707)

In realizing those six levels of the taxonomy in language classrooms, questions can bedivided into ‘lower-level’ and ‘higher-level’ Lower level questions which are at the first

three levels: knowledge, comprehension, and application mainly serve the three followingpurposes:

- evaluating students’ preparation and comprehension- diagnosing students’ strengths and weaknesses- reviewing and/or summarizing content

(www.oir.uiuc.edu)Higher level questions are those of three more complex levels They are to:

- encourage students to think more deeply and critically- solve problems

- encourage discussions

- stimulate students to seek information on their own

In most cases, good teachers know how to categorize the questions according to the levelsof their students For example, if synthesis questions are found to be difficult to thestudents, teachers may lower the level of difficulty by asking questions simply foranalysis or application As such, teachers’ flexibility and adaptability are of greatimportance in alternating types of questions to ask to stimulate students’ thinking.

According to Bloom’s Taxonomy, questions can be categorized into six different levels.To ask proper questions and to use appropriate teaching strategies, teachers shoulddetermine the levels of students first and decide the suitable levels of questions that canbe classified as follows:

Knowledgetell, describe, collect, quote, list,define, identify, show, who, when,where

Who is ? What is …??Where does …? happen?Comprehensionsummarize, describe, interpret,

contrast,predict,estimate,differentiate, discuss, extend

What is …? about?

What are the main ideas of …??Why did not …? happen?Applicationapply,demonstrate,calculate,

illustrate, show, change, classify,experiment, discover

Draw some cartoons or charts ortables to illustrate the story/ the mainideas of the passage

How is …? an example of…??How is …? related to …??Why is …? significant?Analysisanalyze, separate, order, explain,

compare, explain, infer

Why does …? happen instead of …??How does …? compare with …??What evidence can you list for …??What can you learn from …??Synthesiscombine, integrate, modify, rearrange,

invent, what if, compose, generalize,rewrite

What ideas can be added to …??What might happen if you combine

with ?…?…?

List events of the story in sequenceWhat might you say about the futureof the story’s characters?

Evaluationassess, decide, rank, grade, measure,judge, explain, support, conclude,compare, summarize

Do you agree/ disagree with …??What do you think about …??What is the most important …??

What is the significance of …? for theperiod of time/ the context?

Compare the story with other stories.

Table 3 – Sample questions classified in six levels

One more thing that should be considered regarding question types is open and closedquestions Some researchers may put closed questions into lower level levels because theythink this type of questions hinders learners’ thinking The interpretation for this is that alimited amount of answers is always provided before hand by teachers Yet, in fact, bothopen and closed questions can be put at any level of questioning To illustrate for thispoint, Linn (2006) offer examples of open and closed questions at both lower level andhigher level as follows:

Lower level Open question: What is an example of an adjective?Closed question: What are the stages of cell division?Higher level Open question: What are some ways we might solve the

energy crisis?

Close question: Given the following data, would you saythat the illiteracy is because of the government or of thepeople themselves?

Table 4 – Sample questions of two levels

Stressing the teacher as a role model in making questions, Aschner (1990, cited in Wu,1993:49) states that the teacher is ‘a professional question maker’ It’s true that goodquestions of the teacher stimulate learners’ thinking and learning Nevertheless, to becritical learners, students must learn to be independent and self-relied Therefore, theyneed to practice questioning by themselves The practice of making questions is quitesimilar to other thinking tasks as it comes from controlled to free steps, from lower levelsto higher levels of thinking At the very first step, teachers’ questions serve as models orexamples and teachers’ instructions decide the way to structure questions and to formquestioning habits of students Then, the more proficient the students are, the moreimaginative and creative the questions can be, i.e the questions at later steps can be ‘alittle crazy if possible’ Tarone (1978:46)

In a Socratic manner, teachers can use the following questions in order to engage thethinking process in their classrooms:

1 What do you mean by _? 2 How did you come to that conclusion? 3 What was said in the text?

4 What is the source of your information?

5 What is the source of information in the report? 6 What assumption has led you to that conclusion? 7 Suppose you are wrong? What are the implications?

8 Why did you make that inference? Is another one more consistent with the data?

9 Why is this issue significant?

10 How do I know that what you are saying is true?

11 What is an alternate explanation for this phenomenon?

Those questions are to stimulate thinking related to the construction of knowledge andfostering the ability of reflection Their forms and purposes correspond to the higherlevels of Bloom’s Taxonomy They can be used in different learning situations with ahigh guarantee of efficiency

However, the suggested questions are not adequate to all circumstances and all aspects oflearning, i.e for each of language skills, questions must be appropriately selected Sincethe thesis’s concern is reading, the questions used in reading class will be thoroughlydiscussed in the next part.

c Critical thinking and the making of arguments

Critical thinking and argumentation are closely related The foundation of criticalthinking is understanding how claims are supported or opposed by evidence That meansa person being good at argumentation can be a good critical thinker because he mustpossess essential critical thinking skills such as collecting information, synthesizing avariety of positions and evaluating the positions Throughout argumentation, people willbe encouraged to engage in effective critical thinking practices including

 investigating all sides of an issue

 defining the problem carefully and completely

 being willing to change a position when shown reasons and evidence  seeking alternative solutions and divergent views in an attempt to choose

the best solution

 realizing that the best is not the same for everyone  remaining open to others' values

 question and compare conflicting interpretations of data  assessing the strength of reasoning and support

 evaluating conclusions

 applying values to reach or evaluate conclusions

Additionally, the ability to make arguments demands a lot of critical thinkingcomponents Argumentation is not an easy skill to acquire as it asks for self-awareness,other’s opinions understanding, reasoning, evaluating and concluding People may thinkthat everyone can argue as everyone has their own opinions However, the art ofargumentation is not simply the presentation of one’s opinions A good argument requiresgood premises, a syllogism, the skills of inducing and deducing Conventionally, whenpeople sway others to accept their points of view, they often make a typical mistake ofignoring the opinions or research of others To correct that mistake, people have to assessdifferent sources to check and question others’ belief and view points.

In language classrooms, to enhance students’ ability of making arguments, there are twoimportant steps namely “input step” and “output step” as suggested by the writer At thevery first stage, teachers should train students skills to identify good arguments Theseskills allow beginners of language learning to get familiar with aspects of intellectual

activities such as the roots of arguing, the process of making arguments, characteristics ofa convincing argument, etc Usually, these skills are mastered effectively through theactivities of reading or listening After learning how others make arguments, studentsshould be trained to do it themselves The skills to construct convincing arguments couldbe the following stage By using evidence and good reasoning in speaking and writing,students are able to nurture and promote their own critical thinking skills.

1.3.2 Being critical means being effective

According to David Nunan (2002:76), there are two phases to learning The first one iswhen learners obtain the knowledge through different ways including reading, watching,listening, etc This phase can be both subjective and objective, active and passive Thesecond phase occurs when the learners use the acquired information effectively in theirlearning as well as in their lives In theory, one’s learning process stops when the secondphase finishes However, to learn effectively and critically the two phases should berepeated to make a circle, not a straight line When applying the knowledge (the secondphrase), good learners reconsider it by asking questions, comparing the situations andevaluating the reality to see what its drawbacks are and what features could be used,improved or refused, what further knowledge or information should be obtained Thecircle not only helps learners understand fully the issues and but creates opportunities forthem to master their cognitive skills as well

Combining the core elements suggested by Bloom et al’s Taxonomy of the CognitiveDomain and Nunan’s two phases of learning as mentioned above, the researcher proposesthe following chart labeled “The circle of learning phases:

Second phase: During the

application of the acquired knowledge, analysis, synthesis and evaluation are

First phase:

The result of the second phrase leads s to the increasing of extensive

Figure 2 – The circle of learning phases

As shown above, the levels and phases must be completed gradually, i.e students mustmaster one level of thinking before they can move on to the next It is not possible forthem to evaluate knowledge if previously they have not understood it, analyzed it andapplied it.

It is factual that developing critical thinking is both teachers’ and students’ responsibilityat every stage of learning However, in initial learning stage, the role of teachers incultivating critical thinking is much more crucial Building and developing criticalthinking skills for students are like partnering and instructing them to practice playing asport As critical thinking is ‘a processes of active and conscious cognition’ (Criticalthinking in everyday life, 2005) which includes a variety of thinking skills, teachers playthe role as both partners and coaches who not only train the athletes but also form aninfluential and effective interaction with them Critical thinking is not likely to developspontaneously, it must be practiced regularly

Among all kinds of classroom, language classrooms are one of the most advantageousenvironments to develop critical thinking because they provide opportunities for studentsto communicate, interact and collaborate As Ustunluoglu (2004:3) puts it

By means of interactive approaches and materials, teachers can help students be

Without doubt, teachers have significant influences on building and developing criticalthinking for students in the classroom To fulfill such an important mission, teachers mustbe well-equipped with good materials and abundant inventories of activities as well asappropriate teaching methodologies to arouse and promote student’s advantageousdispositions which are likely to affect the formation and development of students’ criticalthinking

2 An overview of critical reading

2.1 The concept of critical reading

Critical reading is a process in which readers use certain methods and strategies to get themost out of the materials When reading something critically, the reader will break downan argument into its constituent parts and evaluate its strengths, weaknesses, and validity,and know how to use its implications Those analyses and evaluations lead to the decisionon which information is used and which is rejected.

2.2 The relationship between critical thinking and critical reading

There are different ways to distinguish critical thinking and critical reading Someresearchers claim that critical reading comes before critical thinking as critical reading isa technique for discovering information and ideas within a text while critical thinking is atechnique for evaluating information and ideas (that have already been discovered), fordeciding what to accept and believe In this sphere, critical reading refers to a careful,active, reflective and analytic reading and critical thinking involves reflecting on thevalidity of what you have read in light of our prior knowledge and understanding of theworld These contentions are circumstantial because one may raise the question if areader who understands the text fully can truly evaluate its assertions.

Within another light, some scholars would consider critical thinking and critical readingas two together in harmony Critical thinking helps one to apply several cognitive skills tounderstand the text fully When the assertions seem to be irrational and invalid, the readerwill examine the text as a whole, considering the viewpoints from different angles so as tochoose to accept or reject them To be able to recognize and understand differentviewpoints, then, the reader must learn to read critically

Yet, though considered two in one, critical thinking and critical reading are stilldistinctive That means critical thinking is not critical reading and vice versa Whilepeople read, they sense the text objectively without imposing the prior knowledge orviews on it While they evaluate ideas from the texts, they will have to keep the originalmeaning According to Bernet (1989), readers must not ‘allow themselves to force a textto say what they would otherwise like it to say or they will never learn anything new.’ (p.213)

2.3 Critical reading strategies

Successful critical reading is a combination of the following seven strategies (Nunan,2001 : 187 - 196) Of all, the last three ones are much more influenced by criticalthinking than the first four Deliberately, these three strategies are more cognitive andcontemplative while the first four are more mechanical

Previewing is ‘learning about a text before really reading it’ Previewing enables readersto get connotations of the text Readers can ask questions to consider the title such as‘What can the title tell me about the text?’ In fact, the title always provides ‘clues to thewriter's attitude, goals, personal viewpoint, or approach.’ and ‘sees what you can learnfrom the head notes or other introductory material, skimming to get an overview of thecontent and organization, and identifying the rhetorical situation.’ Previewing also helpsreaders learn about the structure By asking such questions ‘How it is organized?’ ‘How isthe text structured?’ and looking through the materials, readers will understand not onlythe frame but also the genre of the texts

A critical reader should always:

- have a purpose before reading By asking ‘What is my purpose for reading?’ readers know how to read, what to find and what reading skills to use effectively beforehand

- prepare to read with an open mind An open mind is a clean and flat road leadingto information approaches An open mind can also help readers to take in and/oradjust (if/when necessary) beliefs, values and assumptions when reading Besides, openminded readers will be able to use different reading strategies flexibly.

Contextualizing

Readers should prepare to become part of the writer's audience Learning about theauthor, the history of the author, the history biography, and culture contexts of the text,and the author’s purpose help readers fully engage in the reading process When beingprepared, readers can recognize the differences between their contemporary values andattitudes and those represented in the text That leads to sympathy and understanding

Annotating means to write out the responses, questions or conclusions when reading It isabout making notes of anything that strikes the reader as interesting, important, orquestionable These actions physically, clearly and significantly distinguish a goodcritical reader from a poor one They help readers to pay attention to ambivalent ideas,parts that confuse and unfamiliar or unclear term being used, then the readers can re-reador find further information or references to thoroughly get the whole meaning of the texts.

According to Wilhloit ( :12-17), there are two types of annotations: marginal annotationsand end annotations

Marginal annotations are short, brief and only ‘make sense to the person who wrote

them’ (p.12) This type of annotations includes content notes (notes about meaning of thetext), organization notes (notes about structures or the text) , connection notes (notesabout the link between author’s different ideas and his ideas with other writers’),questions (concerning the reader’s confusion, dissatisfaction or misunderstanding) andresponse notes (concerning the agreements or disagreements, acceptance or reject of thereader to the text)

The second type of annotations – end annotations is ‘types of comments including

summaries, responses and questions’ (p.14) This type of annotations happens at the endof reading and can be in long and detailed paragraphs The questions made when endannotation are different from questions in marginal annotations as they address ‘thesource’s clarity, purpose, or effectiveness’ (p.14) Those questions must be the result ofafter reading procedure and draw connections between the readings and the reader’s ownknowledge and experience

To annotate efficiently, Bernet (1998:169) suggested seven tips as follows: 1 Mark the thesis and main points of the piece

2 Mark key terms and unfamiliar words

3 Underline important ideas and memorable images

4 Write your questions and/or comments in the margins of the piece 5 Write any personal experience related to the piece

6 Mark confusing parts of the piece, or sections that warrant a reread 7 Underline the sources, if any, the author has used

As well, according to Bernet, a good reading material must be with a large margin onwhich the readers can write down every necessary thing

Summarizing

Summarizing requires creative synthesis which shows the deep understanding of readersto the contents and structures of texts When a critical reader summarizes, he does notonly list the ideas and put them together again He restates and paraphrases the ideasusing his own words in a reduced form

Analyzing

Analyzing is reflected on ‘challenges to readers’ beliefs and values’ When analyzing,

readers can ask numerous questions related about the content to help them understand areading and respond to it more fully

Re-reading

Re-reading is a crucial part of the critical reading process A text can be easily understoodafter the first time of reading A good reader rereads a piece several times, ‘until they aresatisfied they know it inside and out’ Because critical reading is different from generalreading under pressure of time, readers can read as much as they want The first timereading should be the skimming time Readers should pay attention to the introduction,the opening sentences of paragraphs, and so on The second reading should be ‘slow,meditative’ Annotating can be done at this time ‘Taking time to annotate your textduring the second reading may be the most important strategy to master if you want tobecome a critical reader.’ The third reading should be the time readers ask questions of allkinds as this reading can be used as the chance for readers to find out the meaning ofunfamiliar words or confusing information.

Responding

Making evaluations is one of responding activities Evaluating an argument means testingthe logic of a text as well as its credibility and emotional impact This activity helpsreaders provoke, to express their morals in the relationship with the texts’ values Fromthe critical readers’ point of view, the differences among the values and perceptions canbe uncontroversial but explainable

To respond to the reading texts, a critical reader can put forward an argument However,there is a big difference between arguments and evaluations It is that evaluations focusmore on giving judgments and assessment while arguments take into account reasons andthe process of reasoning

In conclusion, critical thinking and critical reading have an interrelated relationship.Strong critical thinking skills would enhance the efficiency of critical reading and viceversa.

2.4 The relationship between critical reading and three other communication skills

Out of three other language skills namely speaking, listening and writing, critical readinghas a close relationship with speaking and writing Those two skills can be usedintegratively in the reading lesson Speaking can be used when a reader wants to discusswith other people the issues raised in the piece of reading It can also be found during thereflection time when a reader expects to speak out his evaluation or reaction to the givenarguments in the texts

However, in writing, the readers can enjoy the following advantages First of all, inwritten form, they can explore the issues more thoroughly and formally When writing,one can think further and change his mind That means evaluation occurs as the writingprocess takes place Secondly, writing provides chances to record the evaluation, analysis,etc which may be very useful later when the reader wants to refer to or compare ideasabout the same topic.

In addition to the above advantages of writing activity in a critical reading lesson, writingis closely connected with reading as intensive, reflective, analytical reading provides goodevidence for sound and valid arguments in writing Obviously, an argumentative essaydoes not merely assert only one opinion or idea To present a good argument, the writermust be sure that the argument be backed up with valid data, facts or viewpoints fromdifferent sources of information As such, critical reading helps writer avoid biases andprejudices

Critical reading skills are also related to critical listening skills Learners can alsoexplicate and model ways of thinking using and processing the information fromlistening Moreover, listening with its role as an input provider may assist readers to gainmore information in a different way In language classrooms, listening can be put in preor post stages to refresh the atmosphere and allow readers to develop the sense of hearing.

2.5 The differences between critical readers and general readers

To distinguish the two kinds of readers apart, it is necessary to identify the differencesbetween critical reading and general reading

Firstly, general reading is sometimes related to the reading speed Readers have to scanthe texts in order to find out the information Critical reading can not be It contains somany processes and strategies that must be taken into careful and gradual consideration.Nevertheless, critical reading is not a slow and trailing type of reading Once readersmaster critical reading skills, the speed and the effectiveness can be obtained

Secondly and most importantly, general reading requires simple and mechanical stages ofcognition On the grounds of Bloom’s Taxonomy, normally, general readers can attain the

first three levels of thinking including knowledge (taken from the texts), comprehension(understanding the facts, terms or ideas in the texts) and application (the use of the

absorbing facts, terms or ideas into other learning types or to life – however this level isnot as popular and common as the first two levels) Meanwhile, critical reading deploysnot only those three stages which are primarily lower-order thinking levels but alsoanalysis, synthesis and evaluation being the higher-order thinking levels (see figure 3).

General readingCritical reading

Figure 3 – The levels of thinking that general reading and critical reading require

In general, critical readers and general readers are distinctive basing on the followingfeatures

First and foremost, to critical readers, texts do not provide only what a text says but howit is said, why it is said and how it accesses the matter Critical reading is not simply closeand careful reading To read critically, one must actively recognize and analyze evidenceupon the page Meanwhile, to non critical readers, texts just provide facts and readers gainknowledge by memorizing the statements within a text This accompanies with a series ofmatters, one among which is the way readers ask questions Critical readers ask analysis,hypothesis and evaluation questions while non –critical readers ask summary ordefinition questions

Next and most importantly, to non-critical readers, texts are treated as “obvious” or “Mr.All Right” That means the readers passively accept everything written in the text withoutquestioning Meanwhile, critical readers do not blindly accept the "obvious" statements ina text ‘They need to move beyond challenging overt statements to taking an assertivestand against the text's assumptions.’ (Chitra Varaprasad)

3 Teaching critical reading

3.1 General reading vs critical reading

As was discussed in the previous part, reading in the EFL classroom plays the mostimportant role for it is the basis of other communication skills

Basing on Grellet’s list of reading skills (1981: 4), the researcher has divided the givenskills into two categories normally seen in teaching reading including ‘general readingskills’ and ‘critical reading skills’ The basis for distinction is the increased level ofdifficulty going along with the increased level of the thinking process which requires theinvolvement of more complex cognitive skills

As shown in table five below, at the most basic level, reading is the recognition of wordsfrom simple recognition of the individual letters and how these letters form a particularword to what each word means, not just as an individual, but as part of a text This kind of

reading does not provoke learners’ abilities as well as cognitive process Actually,‘reading is a fluent process of readers combining information from a text and their ownbackground knowledge to build meaning’ (Nunan, 1997: ) Meaningful reading,therefore, results from a number of factors combined such as background knowledge ofthe reader, the reader's strategies and fluency, etc In other words, to be able to understandand ‘transcode’ the intended message, readers have to work with their cognitive functionswhich range from lower, simpler level (general reading skills) to higher, more complexlevel (critical reading skills).

General reading skills Critical reading skillsSkimming

Recognizing the script of a language

Deducing the meaning and use ofunfamiliar lexical items

Understanding explicitly stated informationUnderstanding conceptual meaning

Understanding the parts of a text throughlexical cohesion devices

Distinguishing the main idea fromsupporting details

Extracting salient points Summarizing the text

Understanding information when notexplicitly stated

Understanding the communicative value(function) of sentences or utterances

Understanding relations within sentencesUnderstanding cohesion between parts of atext

Interpreting text by going outside itRecognizing indicators in discourse

Transcoding information into other types ofdisplay

Table 5 - Types of reading tasks in general reading skills and critical reading skills

3.2 Teaching critical reading

As critical reading comprises various complex skills, teaching critical reading is to teachstudents not to ‘simply stare at a text and say ‘Well, I don’t understand it, but it looksnice!’ but to look at a text as quite a complex issue and try to complete the readingstrategies in a complete, comprehensive, and consistent manner.

To teach critical reading, teachers have a lot of things to do First of all, teachers have toset clear, suitable and detailed objectives to the reading procedure The objectives are thebuilding blocks of follow-up actions Second, teachers have to design an eligible materialwhich plays the role as a tool to teach critical reading Then, they will have to define theappropriate methods used in class Also, teachers’ attitudes and behaviors are not lessimportant in critical reading class because they do not only develop the required thinkingskills and strategies for students but also affect the growth of emotions, personalcharacteristics and other aspects related to students’ spiritual life

As critical reading applies most of basic skills of critical thinking, things that can bedeveloped when one thinks critically should also be done in critical reading In the scope

of the study, the researcher mentions two aspects of critical thinking that should beinvolved in teaching critical reading They are questioning and arguing.

For beginners of a critical reading class, arguing step stops after the action of identifyingarguments is complete, i.e listing and categorizing reasons, premises and conclusions ofthe writer’s arguments should be considered the accomplishment at that very first step.Gradually, when approaching higher levels, learners will be able to evaluate, analyze andcompare the arguments of the author and develop their own ones.

As aforesaid, to become critical language learners, suitable types of questions and waysof questioning should be practiced In reading classrooms, different kinds of questions areused to serve different purposes of inquiring information If detailed questions are given,learners will focus on factual details By contrast, if more general or inferentialunderstanding is desired, teacher should emphasize types of questions that concentrate onthe focus Stressing the teacher’s role in orientating students towards the use ofappropriate questions in learning, Duke and Pearson ( ) claim that

When students often experience questions that require them to connect information in the text to their knowledge base, they will tend to focus on this more integrative behavior in the future (p 222)

In the mid-1980s, Raphael et al built up a system of questions that can be used in readingclassrooms The system is based on the technique called QARs (Question-Answer-Relationships) According to Raphael (1983), there are three types of questions that

teachers should be able to distinguish when teaching reading They are Right There QARs

to which answers are explicitly stated in the text This first type of questions can be easily

seen in low proficient and non-critical class The second type is Think and Search QARs

to which answers can be made through facts in the text but searching and connecting are

required The last type of questions is On My Own QARs to which answers must be

generated, inferred or concluded through the understanding of the text

Comparing Raphael’s classification of question types and questions based on Bloom’staxonomy, it is visible that each of the three types of questions belongs to the certain

level While most of Right there QARs are simply knowledge questions whose answersare quite prominent, Think and Search QARs require more activities of the brain and OnMy Own QARs ask people to demand themselves to relate evidences, assumptions and

experiences, etc to build up their own arguments Samples of questions of each type andlevel are as follows:

Bloom s’

KnowledgeWho? What? When?Where? How?

ComprehensionWhat is the main idea …??Why did …??

What is the difference?

What is meant by …??

ApplicationWhat would happen if?

…? Do you knowsomeone/ somethinglike …??

Would you do thesame in the samesituation?

AnalysisWhat part of thereading was funniest/saddest/ most exciting?Which things werefacts and which wereopinions?

What could you dothat was just like thecharacter in the storydid?

SynthesisRetell one event fromone character’s point ofview.

Rewrite a sentencefrom the reading butchange one thing in it.

Write a new sametopic story.

Writeashortcomment on thestory.

EvaluationWere the charactersgood or bad?

Were they right to do?

Table 6 - Samples of questions of each type and level

Basing on the functions and features of each sort of questions, teachers can differentiatestrategies in designing questions for students by applying Raphael et al’s models orBloom’s taxonomy Also, students should be taught to develop ‘a sense of efficacy andconfidence’ (1983) in responding to and making their own questions.

To make it easier for teachers to help students develop their critical reading skills, Daniel(2000) explains three steps that may be used in reading class

- Understand literal meaning of the text In this step, students need to understand

the meaning of words in context, comprehend the structures, metaphors and evidences presented in the text.

- Describe and analyze To make this step work, students need to analyze all the

details that build up the texts and their relationships including: content (contentsof the topics and sub-topics – who and what), language (types of language used in each part of the text, purposes of the use), structure (overall structures, each part’s structures and the connection among the structures)

- Comprehend The third step demands students to catch on the conclusions, to

make appropriate judgments and to evaluate the reliability of the points and proof in the text.

To help students practice critical reading skills, those steps can be integrated into a

procedure which contains three indispensable stages: pre-reading, while-reading andpost-reading

The pre reading stage brings readers opportunities to preview the readings and to have an

overview of what they are about to read Once the readers have accomplished in thisstage, they will be provided with good preparations

While reading, generally, carries the following purposes:

- to help learners understand writer’s purposes

- to assist learners comprehend the structures of the texts - to clarify text content

The critical while reading must attain some more goals They are:

- to help learners understand writer’s purposes, arguments, reasons and implications

- to integrate readers with the texts- to practice thinking skills

In while reading, the activities can be scanning, skimming, reading for detailed

information, predicting meaning of new words, etc Those reading activities might beused to serve different reading purposes If the learners need main ideas, they should skimthe texts If they want to find out supporting ideas, they must read intensively or scan thetext If students want to read critically, beside the listed skills, students must practice theskills of analyzing, synthesizing, inferring, evaluating and so on.

Post-reading activities have two functions: clarifying any unclear meaning and reacting to

the text The activities in this stage may include writing, listening, role-play, debate ordiscussion on the topic and problem solving with the aid of information from the text Ingeneral reading classes, frequently the post reading stage is forgotten because someteachers may consider it as unimportant In critical reading classrooms, nevertheless, postreading stage must be properly handled as it provides opportunities for the reactions toand reflections on what have been read.

4 Summary of the chapter

This chapter provides an overview of theories related to basic components of criticalthinking and critical reading such as the concepts of critical thinking and critical reading(as in 1.1 & 2.1), the close relationship between critical thinking and critical reading (asin 2.2), the elements forming the habits of thinking critically (as in 1.2) In a nutshell,critical thinking skills in general and critical reading skills in particular allow the learnersto think and work clearly, rationally, effectively and independently Therefore it isrecommended that teaching reading, the teachers should teach students to become criticalreaders.