The impact of graphic organizers on critical thinking and reading skills with adult ESL students

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of graphic organizers on critical thinking skills when used with adult ESL students. Two fictional, abridged short stories, God Sees the Truth, But Waits, and The Necklace were used to compare the development of thinking skills according to the indicators on Bloom\u27s Taxonomy. The first story, God Sees the Truth, But Waits, employed traditional post-reading activities. The second story, The Necklace exclusively used graphic organizers to measure thinking skills. The stories were orally read in class and students responded to post-reading exercises individually and in small groups. The results showed greater writing production and slightly higher quiz scores in the stories using graphic organizer activities. The development of deeper thinking skills was marginally apparent in graphic organizer responses. In post-testing surveys, students indicated strong support for graphic organizer use rather than traditional writing activities as learning tools