Evaluating Reading, Writing, and Critical Thinking Skills of ESL and EFL Students

Critical Thinking

What Are Critical Thinking Skills?

In 2011, my school tasked all EFL teachers with evaluating the critical thinking skills of all students in grades one through twelve. There was no guidance from the administration on how teachers should assess students and assign a score for thinking. With this in mind, I started to examine what is involved in thinking and began to devise a vehicle for measuring the thinking skills of all students.

After reflecting on the problem, I concluded that there are six basic critical thinking skills. These skills include knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Let's first detail what these six skills mean.

1. Knowledge:

The process of critical thinking begins with knowledge. Knowledge is obtained by personal experience or through books and teachers in school. When you burn your finger by touching fire, this is knowledge or discovering something new through experience. Learning the formula to calculate the area of a circle is the kind of knowledge you get in school and through books.

2. Comprehension:

The following process of thinking is understanding what you perceive or know through your senses. It also includes reorganizing and sequencing facts and the sequence of steps in doing something. Making inferences is a necessary part of comprehension. When a person makes inferences, he or she "connects the dots" by using knowledge and drawing on personal experiences to conclude something not stated in black and white. It is in effect reading between the lines.

3. Application:

Application in thinking is using knowledge and comprehension to understand practical worldly things. Making predictions is one kind of application in thinking. When you do this, you produce knowledge using the knowledge you already comprehend. Constructing a building based on engineering principles is one example of the application of skill in thinking.

4. Analysis:

The fourth step is analysis. In an analysis, a person is dividing information into categories and subcategories. You are also clarifying the "who", "what", "when", "where", etc. of what is happening. For example, in the field of chemistry, this is done by using certain principles and steps to determine the elements present in a particular chemical compound.

5. Synthesis:

This is one of the higher-order thinking skills. It involves organizing, constructing, and creating the end product. One does this by formulating questions and devising and testing theories like a scientist.

6. Evaluation:

Evaluation is the highest thinking order skill. It implies determining what is good or bad about a finished product and thinking of a way to revise what is wrong. When a person presents a critical review of a book he has read, he is evaluating it.

Evaluating Reading, Writing, and Critical Thinking Skills

It would be useful to devise a rubric for evaluating the reading, writing, and critical thinking skills of ESL and EFL students. This rubric would measure how well students can answer the following types of questions representative of the six thinking skills:

1. Knowledge Type Questions:

For reading, the students would read a passage, and then answer questions related to the "who", "what", "where", and "when" of the article where the answers are easy to find. In answering these questions, the student is regurgitating what is in the text. For writing, the students might be asked to write sentences listing the members of their families.

2. Comprehension Type Questions:

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This kind of reading comprehension question would involve answering the main idea of a passage, or responding where inferences must be made. For example, the students might read that Ann went to bed at 3:00 A.M. and didn't go to school the same day. A question based on this would be why Ann didn't attend school. For writing, the students might be asked to write the sequence of steps in making an omelet, given the ingredients and equipment used.

3. Application Type Questions:

For reading, the students could first read a story about a diligent girl who became the best student in her class. A question could then be asked about whether the student would be successful in studying in college. For writing, the students could first be asked to read a paragraph describing life in New York, and then write a paragraph describing life in Bangkok.

4. Analysis Type Question:

In reading, the students read a paragraph about two girls and then are asked to answer questions that describe what kind of girls they are. The answers to the questions are not in black and white in the reading. For writing, the students first read an article about life in Bangkok, and then they write about the advantages and disadvantages of living in Bangkok.

5. Synthesis Type Question:

For reading, the students first read an article about life in the future, then they answer questions predicting what kinds of food will be eaten in the future. For writing, the students will predict how people will communicate 40–50 years from now.

6. Evaluation Type Question:

Finally, for this highest-order thinking skill, students might be asked to initially read a story, and then answer questions about judgments made of characters in the story. For writing, the students could be asked to write how they felt at the end of the story. They could also be asked to rewrite the ending of the story.

I feel that questions for all six critical thinking skills can be asked to all levels of students from grades one through twelve. It is the teacher's job to create the best type of thinking questions based on the backgrounds and interests of students.

Critical Thinking

Critical Thinking Skills

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This content is accurate and true to the best of the author’s knowledge and is not meant to substitute for formal and individualized advice from a qualified professional.

© 2011 Paul Richard Kuehn

Comments

Paul Richard Kuehn (author) from Udorn City, Thailand on May 23, 2012:

Chef-de-jour,

Thank you very much for reading and the favorable comment.

Andrew Spacey from Sheffield, UK on May 23, 2012:

Thanks Paul, a well thought out hub with some good insights based on your own teaching and learning and research. There's just no substitute for personal experience expressed in an objective fashion.

When I've time I'll look for more.