Improving EFL Learners’ Oral Production through Reasoning-gap Tasks Enhanced with Critical Thinking Standards: Developing and Implementing a Critical TBLT Model, Pre-Task Plan, and Speaking Rubric

Abstract

This study aims to design and implement a speaking task model following the principles of Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) and Critical Thinking (CT). The study mainly investigated to what extent the use of critical thinking standards had an impact on the students’ oral performance with respect to the linguistic trilogy of fluency, accuracy, and complexity. Experimental research design was conducted to examine the differences in research foci between the non-treatment and treatment groups. Data were drawn from 16 students of the English Language Teaching department and collected through the designed task rubric, speech samples, and semi-structured interview protocols. The findings indicated that adherence to relevant intellectual standards in reasoning-gap tasks had a positive effect on the oral performance of the speakers of the target language. Additionally, concerning two linguistic dimensions of accuracy (p=.00) and complexity (p=.00), MANOVA results showed a statistically significant difference between two main research groups. Based on the semi-structured interview findings, all participants in the treatment group reported positive views regarding their learning experiences and oral performance supported with critically enhanced reasoning-gap tasks. This study proposes language teachers a synthesized TBLT model enhanced with critical thinking standards. With this task model, suggested pre-task plan, and speaking rubric, they can boost their students’ intellectual agility and make them more intellectually and linguistically active in their oral performance.