Enhancing critical reading for higher education

Abstract

Critical reading is the basis of education in all fields, but it is a demanding job for average Thai students at all levels, including higher education. To enhance critical reading, theorists and researchers in SLA (Second Language Acquisition) suggested a model consisting of three steps: 1) recognizing an argument structure, 2) identifying a claim and evidence, and 3) constructing a gist representation. This study, therefore, aimed to examine the effectiveness of the model with three specific purposes: I) to examine the effects of the model on Thai students' critical reading achievement, 2) to explore the students' attitudes toward critical reading, and 3) to determine how critical reading materials should be taught. The subjects were thirty third-year English majors who enrolled in the course AT 417 l Practicum I in the first semester in 2008. A pre-test-post-test, quasi-experimental design with one experimental group was employed to collect quantitative and qualitative data on a critical reasoning test. The elicitation instruments, which were constructed based on the Critical Reasoning Part of the GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test), consisted of instructions, pre-tests, post-tests, interviews, and journal logs. The statistical analysis for quantitative data was a t-test, and in-dept interviews and journal logs were used for analyzing qualitative data. The results revealed that, first, the critical reasoning model had a significant effect on readers' critical reading achievement. The subjects' post-test scores on the critical reasoning test were significantly higher than their pre-test scores. Second, the subjects' attitudes toward the critical reading model turned more positive after the instructions. Finally, to enhance critical reading, the materials should practise these skills: identifying arguments, identifying stated and unstated reasons, strengthening and weakening arguments, making inferences, drawing conclusions, and identifying criteria for judging possible answers. Pedagogical implications of this study, therefore, suggested that instructors need to integrate these critical reasoning skills into their instructional materials in order to enhance critical reading for higher education. Since the GMAT is business-oriented, future inquiry should examine how the readers apply these critical reasoning skills to other academic area contents and naturally occurring texts.