Teaching Critical Thinking Skills in Higher Education: Some Reflections

Abstract

Critical thinking skills are seen as a required quality that students should acquire in order to excel on their education journey. Critical thinking skills enable students to critically analyze materials and improve their analytical, argumentative and communication skills. Using critical thinking skills students are able to evaluate different arguments and based on that knowledge resolve different conflicts and come up with solutions to problems they experience in their lives. The main aim of this paper is to analyze some conceptions of critical thinking skills, to investigate the importance of critical thinking skills for students, and to examine the need for teaching strategies to develop students’ critical thinking. If we are to revive critical thinking in our education system, especially in English language teaching, then we must give opportunity to train, learn, adapt, and of course teach how to evaluate such assessment. This sums up the purpose of this paper, which beside discussing what is critical thinking will research language and critical thinking, evaluation and assessment, critical thinking as educational goal and critical thinking in classrooms with some examples in context of English language teaching. The research method in this paper used to prove the hypothesis that critical thinking is crucial and beneficial for students that should be practiced in language education are descriptive method, analysis, synthesis, and deduction.