An exploration of teaching critical thinking skills on EFL students’ reading comprehension

Abstract

Teaching critical thinking skills is a controversial issue among scholars worldwide. This study was an exploration of teaching critical thinking skills on Ethiopian high school students’ reading comprehension. A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest two-group design was used. The data were obtained using test, reflective journal, and interview from 98 grade ninth Ethiopian students who were selected through random sampling. The experimental group students received critical thinking skills instruction, but the control group students learned through the conventional teaching reading method. The quantitative data were analyzed through using independent samples T-test and descriptive statistics, while the qualitative data were analyzed through thematic analysis. The findings revealed that there was a statistically significant difference between the experimental and control groups in their reading comprehension. When the students who participated in critical thinking skills instruction enhanced their reading comprehension, the students who learned through the conventional method achieved inadequate reading comprehension. Hence, students who were taught reading skills through critical thinking skills, principally, were able to understand explicit and implicit meanings of reading texts, recognize major themes, examine relationships and differences of arguments, and propose alternative explanations. It is, therefore, recommended that researchers, teachers, and students pay due attention to critical thinking skills instruction.