Why teaching critical thinking to our students – Gladys Garcia

Gladys Garcia –

Critical thinking is one of the so-called 21st century skills, it means, it is one of the skills required from professionals in the 21st century. However, it is not only that; it is a life skill. First of all, we must consider what critical thinking is. Critical thinking, according to John Hughes, an ELT author, is not an easy term to define. Hughes (2014, p.1) states that the academic Edward Glaser (1941) defined critical thinking as “the search for evidence to support (or discredit) a belief or argument”. However, this idea was first introduced long ago, with the philosopher Socrates. Hughes (2014, p.2) sums up by saying that “at a very basic level critical thinking is about finding out whether something is true, partly true or not true at all”.
Therefore, why should we incorporate the teaching of critical thinking to our lessons? When students are required to carry out communicative language tasks, they are supposed to think critically. Tasks such as problem-solving, personalized dialogs, dilemmas, among others, require critical thinking in order to be well performed.
Moreover, students need to read and infer meaning from texts. Not only coursebook texts, but also the texts they read on the internet and that might not come from reliable sources. This is called critical literacy. As Hughes (2014, p. 5) points out, students need to approach texts critically. It has also been proved that we use different parts of the brain when we read something, as we store the information, analyze it, reflect on it, make some inferences and then compare to other pieces of info, relating what we have read to things we have previously been in contact with.
Critical thinking is a skill that demands training and development. It also requires an inquisitive, investigative and open mind. Why not help our students by encouraging critical thinking with some tasks and challenging them? This way they can develop more abstract thoughts and concepts that will permeate their academic, professional and personal lives. I am sure they can be very successful in everything they do if they are used to thinking critically.
In my next post, I will bring some ideas of activities to stimulate critical thinking in our lessons.
 
References:
Glaser, E. (1941) An Experiment in the Development of Critical Thinking New York: Colombia University. Teachers College
Hughes, J. (2014) Critical Thinking in the Language Classroom. Italy: Eli Publishing.