The use of Twitter to foster the students' critical thinking skills in critical reading class: A case study at the third semester students of English Education Department of UIN Sunan Gunung Djati Bandung

Critical thinking has been recognized as an essential skill in general education and language learning activities. In recent years, critical thinking has been identified as one of the 21st-century skills that students need to develop in modern society (Partnership, 2009). The development of critical thinking skill is important to the students’ educational success in their current and future grades as thinking is a way of learning content. The use of social media attains to increase critical thinking skills. The more the students engage with social media, primarily as part of language learning activities, the more they can develop higher order skills by reading and making judgments about the credibility of sources of information. This paper is written to achieve the objectives: 1) to find out the process of teaching reading using Twitter to foster the students critical thinking skill, 2) to find out the cores of critical thinking emerged in the students’ answer to the questions related to the Twitter post, and 3) to find out the students’ responses to the use of Twitter in English learning activities to improve their critical thinking skills. This research is qualitative research, particularly a case study. This research was conducted to the third semester students of class A at English Education Department of UIN Sunan Gunung Djati Bandung. The research data were obtained from observation, document analysis, and questionnaire. The data were transcribed, categorized into central themes, and interpreted into a description form and response results. The findings show that the process of teaching reading is established by implementing the four features of critical thinking classroom, such as frequent evaluative questions, encouragement of active learning, developmental tension, and fascinating with the contingency conclusion. Moreover, the data from the students' paper shows the strength and the weakness of the students answers to the questions related to the Twitter posts. In term of strength, the high and middle-achieving students could present the cores of critical thinking skills such as interpretation and analysis in their answers. While in term of weakness, low achieving students could not present all of those cores. One of the students merely present interpretation in her answer. In conclusion, the finding shows that the use of Twitter in teaching reading could foster the students' critical thinking skills. Then it was recommended that the next research offers the various methodologies how to involve critical thinking skills in the classroom and the more variety of materials should be used to encourage the students' critical thinking