Critical thinking, EAP and supplementary resources

The development of critical thinking skills in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) students is a major area of interest for teachers in the sector. While teaching on a sessional EAP course at a university in New Zealand, I used a range of supplementary materials to develop a three-stage framework to assist students in developing their critical thinking (CT) ability. As it was not possible to cover very many aspects of developing this crucial CT skill in the time allocated for critical thinking in the course, this framework seemed like a viable option to cover the core content. The three stages included critically evaluating their self-assumptions, critically evaluating academic articles on a macro-level and critically evaluating academic articles on a micro-level in terms of the language used. Ultimately, I hoped that this could lead to students developing the ability to critically evaluate their own writing once they developed the ability to be more critical of what they were reading