The Effects of a Task-Based Writing Program on Developing Critical Thinking and Writing Skills in Students of English as a Foreign Language in a Jordanian University

The crucial link between teaching Critical Thinking (CT) and writing instruction has been well documented in research in second and foreign language contexts (Applebee, 1984; Ennis, 199; Marzano, 1991; Menary, 2007; Orsi et al., 2011; Schafersman, 1991). EFL/ESL classroom practitioners tended to employ varied strategies to embed teaching CT in language and writing classrooms. However, in the Jordanian teaching context, challenges remained in implementing CT skills into a topic which often needs considerable remodelling of a teacher’s plan of how to teach this concept in a given program such as English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing. In addition, very few Jordanian work has addressed the effective teaching methods to promote CT skills (Al‐Fadhli & Khalfan, 2009; Hamdan, 2015; Romanowski & Nasser, 2010) in order to aid the undergraduate learners become better critical thinkers (Sperrazza & Raddawi, 2016). The difficulties arising from the previous concerns have triggered the present research, which sought to explore the influence of a task-based design writing program informed by Bloom’s taxonomy on enhancing both CT and writing skills in EFL students in a university writing program in Amman- Jordan. A quasi-experimental study involving 50 Jordanian university EFL participants in the University of Jordan (25 subjects in the control group, and another 25 in the experimental group), and pre- and post-tests in argumentative essays have been developed. Following the achievement of the tests’ validity and reliability, a designed task-based writing program has been applied to examine how it could help to foster the enhancement of Jordanian EFL participants’ CT and writing skills. The conceptual design of the study was guided by the research and theories of second writing pedagogy (Hyland, 2003, 2015; Sasaki, 2018; Usó-Juan et al., 2006); CT, and Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT) (Ellis, 2000, 2003b; Long, 2014; Paul & Elder, 2006a, 2006b, 2009; Skehan, 1996, 2003). It was hypothesised that a TBLT writing program would facilitate Jordanian university EFL undergraduates to enhance their higher CT and writing skills. The research specifically addressed the following questions: 1- Does the task-based writing program have an effect on the development of critical thinking skills in Jordanian EFL students? 2- Does the task-based writing program have an effect on the development of writing skills in Jordanian EFL students? Participants were asked to write a number of short texts related to sets of varied authentic topics. For the length of two months, the control group continued studying with the existing curriculum materials and the traditional teaching method while the experimental group followed the TBLT design method. The writing rubrics, students’ writing performance and their scores in the pre- and post-writing tests were collected and analysed as empirical evidence. The statistical program SPSS was utilised to organise and compile for gathering data. The obtained findings of the research revealed that statistically significant differences were identified between the groups in their higher CT skills in terms of explanation, inference; and evaluation. The explanation computed t-value is 12.309, the inference t-value is 9.230, and the evaluation computed t-value is 20.732; whereas the tabularised t-value is 1.984 at the significant level P