Педагогикалық жоғары оқу орны мен білім беру ұйымдары

 

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106 

 

 

Furthermore, students answered on the question about the activity itself and how it was 

organized. First of all, all of the interviewee said that the instructions given were clear although one 

student replied that it was very strange in the beginning not to have any limit and to write about 

whatever they want on the topic. In addition, students said that it would be better to have this 

activity from the beginning of school year so they could have more practice.  

 

Above all, the participants referred to the fact that they have noticed that even in short 

period they have noticed some changes in language. Some wrote that it was easier to write entries in 

the end of the project whereas others did not expect themselves to be able to produce that amount of 

writing. There were also students who stated that they have observed a great improvement in their 

writing as it become more connected and beautiful. All this might point on the benefit in terms of 

raising their awareness and confidence in using foreign language described by the scholars [8, 139-

170]. 

 

Conclusion 

 

The results of the study have revealed that journal writing activity helped expressing 

develop students’ voices about their lives by giving space to express their opinions and 

demonstrating creative skills. The findings of the project let me conclude that with some 

modifications this activity can be a very useful tool which may not only enhance standardized 

exams preparation class, but also raise students’ motivation and awareness to EFL writing, give 

opportunity for self-expression, and consequently gain confidence in expressing their voice.  

The major Bloom’s Taxonomy levels which were demonstrated in the journals identified were 

evaluating and creating. However since the data analysis showed low representation of students’ 

degree of using the pre-teaching material other alternative methods of analysis were constructed. 

Thus, creativity was seen by students’ demonstration of doodling and drawing, using ellipsis, text 

language and streams of consciousness. Besides, it must be noted that the journals distinguished by 

some aspects that were individual for some writes. For example inserting quotations, songs and 

poems, stickers; putting signatures, brackets, listing and drawing graphs and addressing the journal.  

The formatting aspect was seen in the large usage of highlighting, color shift and capitalizing. 

Moreover, the large use of first personal pronouns, modal verbs, questions was documented. The 

participants at the same time used interjections, exclamation and imperative sentences quite often. 

The topics selected for the additional entries included such areas as school, belief, family, personal 

dreams and self-criticism. Likewise, the interview showed that students liked the activity and that 

they would like to continue it in the future. Most of the students did expect themselves to write to 

that extend and noted that it was easier to write in the end of the project rather than in the 

beginning. 

Practical Implications 

The analysis of the results of the study permitted to work out the following advice on how to 

employ journal writing activity so that it could it be better used in order to meet the aims of the 

class and needs of the students. These assumptions have been generated basing on positive as well 

as negative experience of the project: 

1. 

The activity should be hold for longer period, preferably form the beginning of the 

academic year so that students would have more practice to express their voices.  

2. 

The pre-teaching part needs to include explaining and consolidating various markers 

of modality and certainty for students to practice this knowledge in their journals. 

3. 

Students need to be asked to write in their entries after some discussion and 

vocabulary covering in the class. It could also be some listening or reading material. This is relevant 

because the participants complained on the lack of vocabulary and ideas. 

4. 

The journal entries might be marked only in those cases when students want to have 

grammar or accuracy feedback (among the participants there is only one person who felt like it). 

However it should be done very accurately and accompanied by positive feedback and comments 

with providing examples. In other cases careful study of students grammar and vocabulary errors 

need to lead to appropriate class content management. The assessment of the journal writing task 

107 

 

should be based on students’ accuracy but need to be focused on accomplishment and may be 

graded in the end of the whole period of activity. 

5. 

Responding to students voices might happen in the classroom by focusing on the 

topics students express more concern. In addition small informal interviews might be hold 

periodically where the instructor may ask about the activity or some other personal questions basing 

on the entries’ content.  

6. 

Instructor should play of a guide and facilitator showing respect to every opinion and 

encouraging students to write whatever they like. For example, it is very important not to silent 

student’s voice in the classroom by laughing or allowing to laugh on particular ideas expressed by 

students.  

7. 

Teacher may buy special journal note books to students which will raise their 

motivation and gain students’ concentration on the activity. 

8. 

The activity should be taken approximately for 10 minutes and students need to be 

asked to produce at least half of a page. Students who did not finish or have more things to write 

need to be asked to write at home. 

9. 

There is also should be freedom for students to write whenever they want to on any 

topics they like outside the class. Students need to estimate their journals as something very 

personal and that is why needed to be welcomed to decorate and organize note books in the way 

they like.  

To sum up, the journal writing activity, while not taking too many time, gives learners 

opportunity to practice their thoughts, have fun, practice creativity, and express themselves the way 

they like. Above all, the activity may help monitoring students’ accuracy that is also important for 

language development. The data may be studied in many other ways and there is a very big amount 

of directions the inquiry might be headed for continuation. However the analyzed information let us 

conclude, that journal writing activity can be very helpful tool in the given context. By little 

modifications and careful teacher’s approach the activity might not only enhance teacher-students 

relationships but also would give an opportunity to develop learners’ opinions. 

 

References: 

1.  Bagheri, S., &Porgharib, B. (2013). An investigation of the effect of journal writing on EFL  

learners’ oral production. International Research Journal of Applied and Basic Sciences, 4(11), 

3520-3525. 

2.  Casanave, C.P. (1994). Language development in students’ journals. Journal of Second 

LanguageWriting, 3(3), 179-201. 

3.  Costellanos, J. (2008). Journal writing and its benefits in an upper intermediate EFL class. 

Profile 9. 

4.  Dahl, K. (1995). Challenges in understanding the learner’s perspective. Theory into 

Practice, 34(2), 24-130. 

5.  Ghahremani-Ghajar, S., & Mirhosseini, S.A. (2005). English class or speaking about 

everything  

class? Dialogue journal writing as a critical EFL literacy practice in an Iranian high 

school.Language, Culture, and Curriculum, 18(3), 286-299. 

6.  Johnson, J. (1991). Student voice: Motivating students through empowerment. OSSC 

Bulletin, 35(2), 1-25 

7.  Kordalewski, J. (2011). Incorporating student voice into teaching practice. Soundout. 

Retrieved  

fromhttp://www.soundout.org/features/incorporating.html 

8.  Liao, M., & Wong, C. (2001). Effects of dialogue journals on L2 students’ writing fluency,  

reflections, anxiety, and motivation. Reflections on English Language Teaching, 9(2), 139-

170. 

9.  Richardson, S.E. (2001). Positioning student voice in the classroom: the postmodern era.

 

(Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State  

108 

 

University, Blacksburg, Virginia. 

10.  Wright, J. (2012). School wide strategies for managing. Retrieved from 

 http://www.jimwrightonline.com/php/interventionista/interventionista_intv_list.php?prob_ty

pe=writing 

 

 

Букенбаев Адильжан Нурланович 

преподаватель иностранного языка КПК 

Шагатаева Зауреш Жарасбаевна 

преподаватель иностранного языка КПК, 

г. Костанай 

 

 

CRITICAL THINKING STRATEGIES IN EFL  

TEACHING AND LEARNING 

 

АННОТАЦИЯ 

Мақала  мақсаты  сыни  тұрғысынан  ойлау  дамыту  туралы  ағылшын  тілін  оқыту/үйрену 

барысында теориялық жəне практикалық идеяларын бекіту болып табылады. Мақалада авторлар, 

сыни тұрғыдан ойлау технологиясын ағылшын тілін оқыту барысына енгізу жəне дамыту мақсаты 

қандай жəне сын тұрғысынан ойлау технологияның элементтері арқылы қалай сабақ жоспарлауға 

болады деген мəселелерге жауап береді. Сондай-ақ сыни тұрғыдан ойлау стратегияларын пайдалана 

отырып сабақтың үлгі жоспары келтіріледі.  

Түйінді  сөздер:  сыни  тұрғыдан  ойлау,  ағылшын  тілін  оқыту/  үйрену,  сабақ  жоспары, ABCD 

моделі, танымдық жəне рефлекторлық салалары, сын тұрғысынан ойлау стратегиялары. 

АННОТАЦИЯ 

Целью  статьи  является  утверждение  теоретических  и  практических  идей  о  развитии 

критического  мышления  в  контексте  обучения/изучения  английского  языка.  В  статье  авторы 

отвечают  на  два  вопроса,  какова  цель  внедрения  и  развития  критического  мышления  в  процессе 

обучения  английскому  языку  и  как  моделировать  урок  с  элементами  развития  критического 

мышления.  Также  приводится  примерный  план  урока  с  использованием  стратегий  критического 

мышления. 

Ключевые  слова:  критическое  мышление,  обучение/изучение  английского  языка,  план  урока, 

модель ABCD, познавательная и рефлекторная сферы, стратегия критического мышления. 

 

 

 

 

ABSTRACT 

The aim of this article is to share both theoretical and practical ideas about critical thinking 

development within English language teaching/learning contexts. The authors seek to answer two questions, 

namely, why to integrate and develop critical thinking in ELT, and how to create lessons including an 

element of critical thinking development. A lesson plan is provided demonstrating the elements of critical 

thinking strategies in ELT. 

Key words: Critical thinking, English language teaching/learning, lesson plan, ABCD model, 

cognitive and affective domains, critical thinking strategies. 

 

The education focused on prospect should be developed in compliance of two principles: to 

develop students’ skill to be guided in conditions of fast changing world and to find necessary skills 

of comprehension and applying received information. John Dewey marked, that the main task of 

education is the necessity to teach the person to think. Thus, it is necessary to speak about a need to 

develop skill to think, and to think critically. Critical thinking includes skill to estimate not only the 

result, but also specifically the process of thinking. Taking all aforesaid into account, we consider 

that in teaching and in teaching foreign language in particular it is necessary to teach students skills 

of critical thinking, ways of perception and reception of the necessary information. 

109 

 

Defining critical thinking might seem difficult, especially because the term tends to be used 

repeatedly without actually reflecting on its true meaning. To begin with, we can state that critical 

thinking is a quality able to be developed throughout life. But critical thinking is not a dimension 

just applicable to education (in the formal sense of the term). “Critical thinking is self-guided, self-

disciplined thinking which attempts to reason at the highest level of quality in a fair-minded way. 

People who think critically consistently attempt to live rationally, reasonably, empathically. They 

are keenly aware of the inherently flawed nature of human thinking when left unchecked.” (Elder, 

2007). [1, p. 410] 

However, when a foreign language is taught/learnt, even the survival language level may 

require more thinking of how to communicate in a foreign language. This is because languages are 

culturally determined. And as cultures differ, so do languages. Traditions and mentality reflect in 

the language, its vocabulary, grammar structures, modality, etc. When learning the target language, 

students need to accept these cultural differences not as a deviation from the natural way associated, 

as they may think, with their mother tongue but as a fully natural, though different, way of verbal 

expression within a different cultural domain. Practicing thinking critically when trying to identify 

similarities and differences in how the same cliché is put in words in another language makes the 

learning process more enjoyable and culturally enriching even at the beginning level. [3, p. 26-27] 

Moreover, the English language took the role of the lingua franca and is used globally by non-

native speakers of English for intercultural communication. Critical thinking skills are indispensable 

when practicing such intellectual traits as empathy and tolerance thus getting ready for 

communication in multicultural contexts. [3, p.35] 

One more aspect justifying and even requiring critical thinking introduction in the ELT class 

arises due to the rapidly growing international student mobility trends and the use of English as the 

language of instruction in universities around the world. Researchers of the American Foundation 

for Critical Thinking (www.criticalthinking.org) argue that critical thinking is not as a natural skill 

as speaking or running, it is a deliberately developed complex set of skills and features, which takes 

years to acquire. [4] Similarly, a foreign language acquisition needs years of persistent training. So 

practicing both simultaneously saves time and provides a synergy effect: developing the former, we 

improve the latter and vice versa.  

Another point of teaching or learning foreign language is the student’s work assessment. 

There is more to our students' knowledge than simply being right or wrong; rather, our students 

possess a continuum of knowledge with varying degrees of less or more sophistication. Hence, the 

criteria by which we measure student success in our courses - our choice of classroom assessment 

techniques - should vary in sophistication depending on the particular concept or skill we are 

assessing. One of the most widely used ways of organizing these levels of expertise is according to 

Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. [5, p. 10-12] While planning, especially nowadays 

when in some educational institutions it is required to set triune objectives (educational, developing, 

upbringing) in lesson planning, the strategies of critical thinking expect simpler form of setting 

goals and planning in general.  

ABCD Model provides a very convenient framework for the incorporation of all necessary 

components when designing a lesson. Indeed, it is useful to write each objective in one clear 

sentence structured according to the ABCD model, where ‘A’ stands for ‘Audience’, typically the 

students, ‘B’ for ‘Behavior’, i.e. lesson activities, ‘C’ for ‘Condition’ meaning the initial 

prerequisites for the lesson activities, and ‘D’ for ‘Degree’, by which we mean certain measurable 

criteria for the acceptable student performance. Writing objectives using the ABCD model proves 

beneficial because in this way objectives acquire such characteristics as being specific, observable, 

results oriented, and measurable by either quantitative or qualitative criteria. Three examples of 

ABCD modeled lesson objectives will be provided when describing the lesson plan. [6, p. 145] 

Let us take a lesson, which has been developed, for 2

nd

 year college students in order to 

develop their reading comprehension and writing skills by applying some critical strategies relevant 

for the activities of the lesson. For that purpose, we have chosen a D. Defoe’s novel “Robinson 

Crusoe”. Therefore, there are two areas of speculation, which we thought are open for our students 

110 

 

to practice communicative skills of reading, writing, and talking by applying some of critical 

thinking strategies. We have planned three objectives, which incorporate critical thinking, for a one-

hour lesson and used the ABCD model in the description of the lesson objectives. 

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