CRITICAL THINKING PRACTICE IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE EDUCATION CLASSROOMS

Critical thinking education is, generally, the act of recognizing the student as a full human being in all aspects of teaching and learning, with the ultimate purpose of creating creative, authentic, and critical individuals who can solve problems and make decisions for themselves. It holds that students should be engaged in the development and practice of varied creative and critical thinking skills and that they should be encouraged to personalize connections and transfer these skills from the classroom and school contexts to other life situations. This article addresses the issue of critical thinking practice in language education classrooms. It presents some relevant definitions of critical thinking education and discusses some critical thinking skills that students should be encouraged to develop and practice and some barriers to their effective and successful implementation in language education classrooms. To this end, this article suggests some classroom activities and patterns of communication which could help teachers cope with these impediments, and engage their students in the development and practice of these skills.  Article visualizations: