THươNG HUYềN HOàNG (SKILLS LINK LANGUAGE CENTER)

THE CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS AND WRITING AN ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAY IN IELTS TEST : CREATIVITY AND CRITICAL LITERACIES

English Language Teaching (ELT) in the background where English is taught as a Foreign Language (EFL) is a challenging task because the process of language acquisition is carried out outside the usual context. Of all the obstacles facing by both teachers and learners during the language learning process, one of the the most challenging skills to acquire is critical thinking through writing an argumentative essay. Through intensive observations during my teaching, I realize that many students of different levels of English proficiency show their weakness in producing a good writing essay despite their lexical resource. A common issue among them is the weakness in the way they organize and develop ideas to persuade readers. The objective of this research is to investigate the correspondence between writing an argumentative essay and the critical thinking skills and propose several ways to develop students’ critical thinking through writing argumentative essays in the EFL context. In the scope of my study, I examines self perceptions and experiences by 200 students of several high schools who take an IELTS course and who are supposed to enhance their ctitical thinking skills through writing task 2 of an IELTS test. To conduct this research, I use mixed method combining quantitative and qualitative techniques by using a questionnaire including both close-ended and open-ended questions. The findings underline the significant correspondence between writing an argumentative essay contained in the EFL context and critical thinking skills and there are some effective methods are discovered to develop critical thinking in students.

Hoang ThuongHuyen Skills Link Language Center. E-mail : Thuonghuyen.skillslink@gmail.com