Infusing Critical Thinking into EFL Classes

Abstract

In the previous chapter the results of the case study were presented and illustrated. Overall, the results indicated that the infusion lessons helped the students to develop critical thinking dispositions and improved their performance in thinking critically. The teaching of critical thinking contributed to an improvement in their overall writing proficiency, grammatical complexity and fluency. Although in the present study it was found that the accuracy of their writing decreased slightly, this indicates the effectiveness of the students’ internalisation of linguistic forms of the target language. Moreover, the infusion lessons were perceived to be enjoyable and helpful by the majority of students, indicating their positive attitudes and adaptation to this new teaching method. These findings point to the effectiveness and applicability of infusion lessons in Chinese high school English classes, indicating the possibility and value of teaching critical thinking in Asian L2 classrooms and at high school level. In this chapter, the findings of the study are discussed in the light of the relevant literature , explaining why and how infusion lessons can have a positive impact on students’ thinking, learning and attitudes. Firstly, the context created by the critical thinking tasks is described, in order to portray how the characteristics of the subject class were taken advantage of in order to teach critical thinking in the infusion lessons. The discussion then moves to demonstrating how the infusion lessons succeeded in achieving a mutual reinforcement between the students’ critical thinking and their learning of English; this is followed by a description of the effects of the infusion lessons on the students’ thinking, on their writing in English and on their attitudes and perceptions . Finally, the implications of the study are presented.