Abstract
This research aimed to explore students’ views towards the use of a critical thinking pedagogical model for vocabulary instruction. From this end, a questionnaire was utilized to collect both quantitative and qualitative data to investigate the students’ opinions about such an educational experience. Data analysis revealed that the meaningful and purposeful critical thinking vocabulary tasks triggered learners’ motivation while engaging their higher cognitive abilities in solving the tasks and enabling them to reflect on their topics based on their personal and life experiences. This challenging process led learners to have more opportunities for practicing ‘elaborative rehearsal’, and as a result, to process the targeted vocabulary deeper. This created a stronger association with the taught vocabulary, which ultimately enabled them to be encoded in the learners’ long-term memory. Based on these findings, the authors recommend that teachers, teacher educators, and curriculum designers should draw upon the findings of these studies and consider the advisability of embedding critical thinking-based teaching methods across all strata of the EFL teaching system: policy documents, curricula, teacher training courses and the language classrooms.
Highlights
When the English language is currently used as a global language by people from various linguistic and cultural backgrounds, the primary purpose of language learning is to build the L2 learners‟ communicative competence so that they become capable of communicating in the target language-English (Richards & Rogers, 2001)
Data analysis revealed that the meaningful and purposeful critical thinking vocabulary tasks triggered learners‟ motivation while engaging their higher cognitive abilities in solving the tasks and enabling them to reflect on their topics based on their personal and life experiences
The current study examines the attitudes of Saudi learners of English towards the use of the critical thinking (CT) pedagogical model for vocabulary instruction
Summary
When the English language is currently used as a global language by people from various linguistic and cultural backgrounds, the primary purpose of language learning is to build the L2 learners‟ communicative competence so that they become capable of communicating in the target language-English (Richards & Rogers, 2001). Similar to learners in many other contexts, Saudi learners face many problems in their quest for language acquisition (Alnofaie, 2013; Al-Nasser, 2015; Al Zahrani & Elyas, 2017; Elyas & Al Zahrani, 2019) One such problem is the learners‟ lack of an adequate set of English vocabulary, which may impede their willingness to communicate. Saleh (2015) claims that Saudi learners of English at the preparatory year at one of the most prominent universities in Saudi Arabia reported that their main reason for performing poorly in the speaking skill is the lack of vocabulary When it comes to class activists, Elyas and Picard (2013) claim that the Saudi education system does support critical thinking and creativity as one of the classrooms‟ activities. Richards and Rennandya (2002) stressed the relation of vocabulary and fluency by stating that: Without an extensive vocabulary. ... learners often achieve less than their potential and may be discouraged from making use of language learning opportunities around them such as listening to the radio, listening to native speakers, using the language in different contexts, reading, watching television. (p. 255)
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