Abstract
Recently, developing students’ thinking, especially critical thinking (CT), has become a hot issue. Critical thinking has been claimed to have an important impact on learners’ reading comprehension because it can help them analyze, evaluate, construct their thinking, solving problems and reasoning (Ennis, 1989). However, the extent that teachers’ classroom activities contribute to developing students’ critical thinking has rarely been researched. The current case study was conducted with six EFL high school teachers and 10 reading lessons in Vietnam to explore the teachers’ use of questions and to analyze if these questions could facilitate the students’ critical thinking. Classroom observations and the cognitive domain of Bloom’s taxonomy were adapted as the research instruments. The study results reveal common types of questions are often used by high school teachers in their reading lessons. Suggestions are made on types of questions that teachers should function more in their class in order to enhance students’ critical thinking.
Highlights
Critical thinking has been considered a valuable tool for teaching and learning since the time of Socrates
All of them emphasize that CT plays an integral factor in the development of reading comprehension; as it can be seen critical thinking and comprehension both are cognitive abilities having cognitive skills in common so that improving the former can contribute to the improvement of the latter, and vice versa (Facione, 1992; Facione & Facione, 2010; Fahim, Bagherkazemi & Alemi, 2010; Paul, 2004; Stapleton, 2001)
The subjects involved in this study were 6 teachers who are in charge of the English reading classes for grade 10th and 11th at a high school for the gifted in Mekong Delta
Summary
Numerous researchers have indicated the relationship between students’ CT and reading comprehension in the classroom. All of them emphasize that CT plays an integral factor in the development of reading comprehension; as it can be seen critical thinking and comprehension both are cognitive abilities having cognitive skills in common so that improving the former can contribute to the improvement of the latter, and vice versa (Facione, 1992; Facione & Facione, 2010; Fahim, Bagherkazemi & Alemi, 2010; Paul, 2004; Stapleton, 2001). Question-and-answer activity is viewed as the most common form of communication between students and teachers. A question proposed by teachers can promote students’ learning, participation and thinking, especially CT (Wilen, 1991). Most of them are mainly focused on the influence of teachers’ questions on classroom interaction and learners’ oral output (Hu, 2004; Shomoossi, 2004; David, 2007; Lu, 2007)
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