Investigating the Role of Multimodality in Promoting Algerian EFL Students’ Critical Thinking Skills Case Study: Third Year EFL Students at Biskra University

Abstract

This paper aimed at investigating the role of multimodality in promoting Algerian English as Foreign Language students’ critical thinking skills. The vital role of critical thinking skills in education makes English as foreign language teachers integrate distinctive strategies into their lessons to promote their use by students. However, the most suitable strategy is the one that enhances the interaction between teachers and students. Multimodality allows making meaning and interaction between individuals since it covers a mixture of modes. The latter assists the flexibility of interaction and then it can enhance cognitive abilities. Thus, multimodality can be considered as a workable strategy that fosters students’ critical thinking skills. This paper was important in the sense that it attempted to investigate the extent to which those students can use critical thinking skills, and to describe the role of multimodality in promoting them among English as Foreign Language students. The method adopted in this paper is descriptive one for which the researcher used two data gathering tools: a questionnaire and an interview. The questionnaire was administered to four teachers and eighty-third year students from the department of English, at Biskra University, but the interview was aimed only at the teachers. It was found that students still face difficulties in using critical thinking skills; basically, higher-order thinking ones. They mostly preferred multimodality as a strategy to promote these skills and to minimize the difficulties they faced. The findings showed that there were conflicting answers among the teachers: On the one hand they confirmed the usefulness of multimodality in promoting their students’ critical thinking skills, but on the other hand they implemented another strategy. Therefore, it was recommended to find out the reasons why this strategy was not used by teachers though they confirmed its usefulness regarding the promotion of critical thinking skills on the part of students.