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[uh huh]

There's a great discussion on the China off-topic board about preparing students for study abroad. That makes me wonder yet again about how to teach critical thinking skills, particularly in--but not limited to--those environments where expressing opposing views is not such a good idea. As an example, I worked with journalism students in a country where the President was so popular he was re-elected with 95% of the vote and where journalists periodically (pardon the pun) get in trouble and prison for expressing divergent views.

What kinds of challenges do you face and how do you teach critical thinking skills?

[spiral78]

I have quite a bit of experience with work on 'critical thinking skills,' though I'd hesitate to say that we 'teach' them (students get it to a greater or lesser degree not necessarily related to what teachers aim for!).

So far as the cultural issues, I work in Western contexts, so have the advantage of being in regions where critical thinking is the norm. However, I have worked here with many students from countries where this is not the case, including Saudi Arabia and China (and others).

We simply present critical thinking in the context of 'this is the kind of thing we do in Western countries.' There is no pressure for them to extend the critical thinking tasks to their own cultures or history or norms.

Divorcing the skills from their own cultural context can make this quite a lot less threatening. It becomes just another skill they need to communicate effectively in Western contexts.

I would probably simply stick very carefully to materials and examples from Western contexts, such as advertisements (a good place to start).

I'd be interested what other teachers in cultures where independent thought is not necessarily valued do to prepare their students for study abroad where critical thinking is.....critical to their success!

[johnslat]

Ah, you beat me to it, spiral - I was going to suggest ads, too. There's a lot of stuff on the Net - google using ads to teach critical thinking. Here's an example:


http://www.admongo.gov/lesson-plans.aspx

It's aimed at kids - but it could also work, I'd say, with EFL/ESL

Regards,
John

[nomad soul]

I teach in the Middle East and have successfully used various real ethical dilemmas to develop my students' critical thinking skills. The students (intermediate and advanced levels) find the scenarios challenging but really enjoy working through the issues by discerning the information, forming and supporting opinions, presenting and explaning their position, learning conflict resolution skills, etc. I've had to adjust some of the situations to make them more age and culturally appropriate, but that hasn't been a biggie. USC's Levan Institute's ethics resource center has a good website for incorporating ethical conflicts into your students' learning. You can also do an Internet search on ethical dilemmas cases or just create your own using news stories, personal experiences, clips from tv shows, etc. For basic info on using ethical reasoning for critical thinking, search the Web for ethical dilemmas critical thinking.

[uh huh]

Thanks for the suggestions; I'm following up.

In the first post, I sacrificed clarity for brevity about what I'm grappling with, so let me expand a little more with some examples.

I had a very savvy student in Senegal, a man in his 30s. He'd played pro ball out of the country, done a year of college, was articulate. He told me his father was in the US and was arranging for him to go there to finish college. I asked if he was studying for his TOEFL. His reponse was, "No, my daddy told me it's easy." He wrote me a truly crappy e-mail one day, and I called him on it and asked him why he had done such a bad job. he told me he didn't think it was very important. Later I suggested he check out volunteering with a certain organization. He asked me to tell him how to do it. I told him to go on the website and follow the instructions, but instead he sent a letter to the organization asking if they needed help. When he received no answer, he told me online stuff never panned out anyway.

In Central America I worked with a smart man who was doing some research about student success in primary school. He told me one of the students was disruptive and that this was because his father was an alcoholic. He was convinced of the cause and effect despite my suggestion that there could be other reasons for the student's behavior.

Some Saudi students were unable to look at a picture and describe what they saw, even after examples were given. They looked at a picture of a bird and said it flew even though it wasn't flying in the picture.

And so on....

[spiral78]

Some people just aren't motivated to spend much energy on tasks. That's not critical thinking, necessarily....it's just focus and, well, energy....


Some cultures don't value (or practice) hard work on tasks....

[Glenski]

I don't teach critical thinking skills. My students are not up to it. That's a sad fact, because they seriously need it.

[spiral78]

I really think they have to be at least mid to upper int to tackle things like inference.

Honestly, to me it would be quite difficult to spend the majority of my teaching time with lower level students. You guys have far more patience than I!! Kudos...

[uh huh]

Spiral78: I'm thinking on the (possible) connection between lack of critical thinking and focus/energy/motivation, so I'm glad you brought up that point. If people are in an environment where they (think they) have no reason to try or to expend energy because they won't get anywhere anyway, wouldn't that affect the development of critical thinking skills and (also possibly) create a vicious cycle where lack of critical thinking skills blocks the ability to see other possibilities?

Just to clarify, the students I am talking about are at least intermediate, at least in their speaking skills. Writing skills are another matter, sigh.

When I was flying out of Dakar, I struck up a conversation with the flight attendant, who was Senegalese. I was so excited because I thought, aha, my students can be flight attendants, so I asked him. Turns out he was married to a US citizen. I told him what my students had said, about there being no future after university. He said yep, when they're 50, they'll be hanging out on their parents' steps because there is no other future for them here in Senegal. Or they can marry a Toubab (generally translated as white person) and get out of Africa.

Glenski: You say your students aren't up to it. What do you think they would need in order to be up to it?

We've all had students who somehow are able to think differently than the norm. Why? What happened to or for them that they see things differently?

[spiral78]

[Sashadroogie]

I have to admit, I get very queasy when topics like these come up. This one seems to generate a lot of divergent views. Here's mine, re-stated: outside specific academic skills, such as listening for inference, deducing a writer's point of view from a text, EFL teachers are not really ideally placed to teach 'critical thinking', whatever that is in the first place. Beyond most teachers' remit. In addition, as can be seen on discussions on various fora, teaching 'critical thinking' seems regularly to degenerate into criticising various host cultures and students as benighted or backward, and inferior to English-speaking ones.

Not saying anybody on this thread is engaged in that. Impressively civilized actually. Just a reminder that care is needed.

[Guy Courchesne]

[uh huh]

I'm glad as well that the discussion didn't go anywhere unpleasant.

This is a subject which interests me greatly. If anyone wants to continue to mull it over together, please feel free to PM me.

[spiral78]

[Dedicated]

I work at a UK university where we introduce overseas students from foundation level ie. pre-undergraduate level (many from Asia, particularly China) to the idea of critical skills from day one and how to develop effective analysis and argument. Some find this immensely challenging.

We use " Critical Thinking Skills" by Stella Cottrell (published by Palgrave, Macmillan 2005) as a core text. This covers topics such as constructing effective arguments; how to critically evaluate other people's arguments; evaluating the material used to support arguments; recognising flawed reasoning; applying critical thinking when reading, writing and making notes.

There is a link website www.skills4study.com which might help you with free study tips, downloads and advice.

We do find that Asian students can grasp critical skills, but it just takes longer than Western students.