Effect of scaffolding socratic questioning technique on the development of L2 students’ critical thinking skills in reading
Language and critical thinking are vital skills needed in the 21st century especially with the emergence of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0). Both skills complement each other. As one engages in critical thinking, the language skills develop as one continues to probe for reasons an...
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2021
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/99626/1/NURSHILA%20BINTI%20UMAR%20BAKI%20-%20IR.pdf |
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| Summary: | Language and critical thinking are vital skills needed in the 21st century especially
with the emergence of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0). Both skills
complement each other. As one engages in critical thinking, the language skills
develop as one continues to probe for reasons and explore a topic Previous
studies demonstrated the significance of promoting thinking skills, particularly
critical thinking in the L1 context. Positive changes in terms of subjects’
achievement and attitudes were observed. Recent trends in L2 context have
attained similar results. On the contrary, students have become passive learners
and are not used to complex thinking skills due to rote-learning, teacher-talk and
the exam-oriented system practiced in most Malaysian classrooms as well as in
Asian ESL context. Thus, this study attempts to evaluate the potential of
scaffolding Socratic questioning strategies in reading as a method to develop
students’ critical thinking skills. This quasi-experimental pretest-posttest study
involves fifty-eight Form 4 students from a secondary school located in Johor,
Malaysia. Students were assigned to control and treatment groups and tested at
the beginning and end of a nine-lesson intervention comprising scaffolding
Socratic questioning in reading activities. ANCOVA was used to measure withingroup
variations for the EG and CG scores as well as an independent t-test via
the Levene’s t-tests for the Equality of Variance was also conducted to test the
differences of scores between the two groups. Data attained from the Cornell
Critical Thinking Test Level X indicated development on participants’ critical
thinking skills. The results indicated that employing critical thinking skills in reading
activities has a statistically significant effect on students’ critical thinking skills. The
findings have useful implications not only for researchers but also for practitioners
and the English learners that critical thinking plays a vital role in reading
comprehension instructions. |
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