Critical thinking cultivation in TESOL with ICT tools: a systematic review

Abstract

The cultivation of critical thinking with the assistance of Information Communication Technology (ICT) tools has drawn much attention from researchers and practitioners in the field of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). With the purpose of exploring whether the application could help improve students’ critical thinking and ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) skills and how ICT tools are applied in TESOL to cultivate critical thinking, a systematic review was conducted and a total of 22 eligible studies were analyzed. The results show that: (1) students’ critical thinking and ESOL skills have demonstrated improvement in the studies applying ICT tools to TESOL; (2) the ICT application is unbalanced across different ESOL skills and various types of ICT tools have been used in different ways to promote students’ critical thinking.