Developing Formal Reasoning through the Study of English

Abstract

Although hardly immune to criticism, Piaget's concept of sensorimo­ tor, preoperational, concrete, and formal operational stages of thought has considerable face validity. In view of the accumulated Piagetian observations that critical reasoning skills develop in a generally sequen­ tial order, the finding that a substantial proportion of adolescents and adults demonstrate very little competency with formal reasoning skills 1 poses a serious educational concern. The purpose of this article is to present ten practical teaching procedures to encourage students to develop formal reasoning skills. A 12th-grade English course will be used as an example. Let us consider one by one the procedures listed in Table 1. (1) Pretest students at the start of the year to determine their respective stages of reasoning. Use this information to assign students to groups. A number of tests have been developed during the past few years that can be used by teachers for this purpose.~ One must keep in mind, however, that a student's failure to solve the test problems does not necessarily imply that he or she is not capable of the reasoning in question. One can fail to solve problems for any number of reasons, lack of motivation and anxiety being two important ones. Therefore, the analysis of test results is helpful, but must be followed up by observations and infor