THE EFFECT OF EXPLICIT INSTRUCTION IN CRITICAL THINKING ON HIGHER-ORDER THINKING SKILLS IN READING COMPREHENSION: AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

This study investigates whether the explicit instruction of critical thinking skills can impact students’ ability to use higher-order thinking skills in reading comprehension. It particularly focuses on the instruction of critical thinking in its evaluative dimension and measures the impact on the development of three thinking skills, namely understanding, analyzing and evaluating. The EFL preparatory class students in the experimental group (n=27) were trained in using two of these skills for reading comprehension whereas those in the control group (n=29) took their normal classes. The results show that the experimental group significantly improved between the pre- and post-tests and outperformed their control counterparts. These results confirm the hypothesis claiming that high-order thinking skills are teachable. However, the results report that higher-order thinking skills develop independently of lower-order ones. Article visualizations