Promoting English as a Foreign Language for Students’ Critical Thinking Skills in Argumentative Essay Writing
Abstract: One of the ways to teach Critical Thinking (CT) is through argumentative essay writing. All processes in constructing an argumentative essay require writers to think critically. Regarding to the importance of CT in writing argumentative essays, university students are the most appropriate participants of this study. Therefore, 60undergraduate management students in DMU participated in the study, particularly in Basic Writing Skills class. This quasi-experimental research aimed at investigating the effects of integrating CT in teaching EFL writing on students’ CT skills in argumentative essays. EFL students’ CT ability is relatively low in that the participants’ scores in the pre test did not reach the average. This implies that the courses offered to undergraduate students focus on language proficiency. On the other hand, the post test results in the treatment group revealed there were good progresses on their CT skills. As a result, the integration of CT is bound to guide students to think more critically and they scored best after the intervention. In addition, CT is teachable in foreign writing classes and can be well applied in the writing of argumentative essay.
Keywords: Argumentative Essay Writing: Critical Thinking: Effects: DebreMarkos University: English as Foreign Language.
