Developing Critical Thinking Skill Through Text Structure In Esl Reading Classes

The main purpose of this experimental study was to determine the effects of awareness of the structure of the text on enhancing critical thinking skills in Malaysian undergraduate ESL reading classes. A comparative study of two groups; namely Experimental and Control group were involved in this study. The study was conducted at Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) with total participants of thirty-two students who were randomly sampled. An experimental pre-test post-test study was conducted to investigate the objectives of the study. At the initial stage of the study, the test of English reading proficiency (TOEFL) was administered to the participants. The scores were used to categorize students into three levels of proficiency in reading skills: good readers, intermediate and low readers as used in the TOEFL test. The participants were then divided in to two homogenous groups: the Experimental and control groups. Each group was having the same number of readers with different reading proficiency level. In the pre-test, all participants from both groups (experimental and control) sat for a reading comprehension test using a reading passage. Three questions were posed based on the passage: two questions tested the analyzing skills of the participants while one question tested the participants’ creative skills. This was done by asking the participants from both groups to write the topic and the main idea of the passage as well as writing the summary of the passage. The experimental group (N=16) was given instructions in how to find the main idea of the texts, using text structures for the purpose of utilizing the ‘analyzing’ and ‘summarizing’ skills while reading the expository texts. The control group (n=16), on the other hand, was given the traditional instruction while handling the texts. A Post-test was conducted for both groups after the instructions, which were conducted in 10 sessions. Independent t-test and Paired sample t-test were used to analyze the data. Data analysis showed that the students, who received instruction on how to analyze and summarize the text using text structure strategy, had better performance in applying critical thinking skills while reading (M=59.53) as compared to the control group (M=36.25). The results of the paired sample t-test showed that the differences were indeed significant; t(15)=7.64, p=0.000 (p<0.05).The results showed a significant difference in distinguishing the main idea from supporting details as well as summary writing between the experimental group’s performance and the control group’s. Experimental group showed significant improvement in the Post-test (M=2.59) over the Pre-test (M=1.74) in answering question number 3. The lower standard deviation in Post-test (SD=0.78) over Pretest (SD=0.88) indicated that the improvement was evenly distributed in the group. The main focus on the students’ summary writing was to differentiate the main idea as well as the important details in their summaries. The results of the study stipulated the fact that the ‘critical thinking’ skill was found to be strongly enhanced in English reading classes by having direct teaching of ‘analyzing’ and ‘creating’ skills.

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