Providing Critical Thinking Training in Argumentative Writing: Its Effects on Students’ Critical Thinking Quality

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of providing critical thinking training in argumentative paragraph writing lessons on university first-year L2 students’ critical thinking quality. Two randomly selected first-year social science classes were involved in the study as non-treatment and treatment groups. The non-treatment group was taught argumentative paragraph writing without integrating critical thinking training into the lessons, whereas the treatment group learned argumentative paragraph writing together with a provision of critical thinking training. The researchers employed the embedded design because the study used mainly quantitative data augmented by qualitative data to probe the reflections of participants in the treatment group on the experience they gained from the intervention. The quantitative and qualitative data were analysed using the one-way between-groups ANCOVA and thematic analysis methods, respectively. The findings of the quantitative data analysis indicated that participants in the treatment group were better in their critical thinking quality scores (F (1, 60) = 79.835, p = 0.000, partial eta squared = 0.571). The result of the interview analysis also revealed that participants in the treatment group gained promising experience from the intervention. It was recommended that integrating critical thinking training into argumentative paragraph writing lessons be considered to enhance university first-year EFL students’ critical thinking quality.