Enhancing Critical Thinking Skills Through Socratic Seminars in EFL Classrooms

Abstract

This article highlights the importance to enhance Critical Thinking (CT) skills within EFL Colombian settings through the implementation of Socratic Seminars. In this regard, the authors carried out a bibliographical review in which several resources were consulted in research databases such as Google Scholar, ResearchGate and both international and national journal repositories, reviewing a total of 90 articles, 20 books, and 10 academic webpages. After that, 16 articles, 14 books, and 2 academic webpages were considered to sustain this research work. This article includes contributions from critical pedagogy, a taxonomy of the cognitive domain and an expert consensus of CT which support and help to comprehend these cognitive skills. Likewise, the main reason for the implementation, advantages, and limitations of CT are explained in detail in order to show how this strategy can be used in the EFL classroom. Finally, it is demonstrated that Socratic Seminars can be used by EFL teachers as a strategy to enhance CT skills among students. In point of fact, the Seminars are deemed to help students not only develop their higher order thinking skills but also to obtain other benefits in their language learning process.