This study examined whether language structure or language proficiency might affect students' critical thinking performance. Previous research has claimed that many non-Western students struggle with the demands of demonstrating critical thought. Two language-related causes have been suggested: one concerning structural limitations in the non-Western students' first language, and the other concerning their second language proficiency. In Study 1 described here, reports written by 110 Japanese university students, who had received instruction in academic discourse for critical evaluation (which is one aspect of critical thinking), were analyzed for use of evaluative statements. No disadvantage was found for use of the Japanese language, which is considered as having a more indirect structure that may make critical evaluation more difficult. Measurements of language proficiency in English and Japanese, however, were found to correlate with production of evaluative statements in those respective languages suggesting that language proficiency could affect critical evaluation use. In Study 2, the same task was given to 43 first year students who had not yet received the same instruction. Analysis revealed similar patterns in their written work but at a lower level, suggesting that the second year students had benefitted from the skills instruction.Furthermore, unlike the second year students, the first year students evidenced no correlations between their language proficiency scores and their production of evaluative statements, suggesting that proficiency on its own is inadequate: students need instruction on the specific language forms and structures to use to demonstrate critical thinking in their written work.
Following a literature review on the area of learning styles, and cross-cultural perceptual learning styles in particular, this article reports the results for a survey of perceptual learning styles of Korean students (n=710). The study is a replication of two earlier studies in the area, and results are comprehensively analyzed in terms of the previous findings of these studies. Preferences for different perceptual learning styles as well as the preference for individual and group learning are examined in terms of a range of variables, including age, gender, year of study, major field, time spent overseas, and attendance at private language institutes. Findings, while supporting some of the previous research in the area, also contradict some of the previous results. Some criticisms are made concerning the manner in which results from previous studies have been compared with each other. Areas for future research are also discussed.
This study examined the factor structure of a Korean version of the Perceptual Learning Styles Preference Questionnaire. The instrument was developed to measure the learning-style preferences of students of English as a second language and English as a foreign language and has gained wide currency as a classroom diagnostic tool and survey instrument for research on second-language acquisition. Reliability estimates (Cronbach's α) for scores on the six scales hypothesized by Reid were generally not good and corroborated results in the limited number of previous studies. A confirmatory factor analysis led to the rejection of the hypothesized model, and an exploratory factor analysis suggested a three-factor model as more appropriate. It is argued that the results of this study indicate that the instrument is flawed and that the results of previous research based on it are questionable. It is also argued that the continued use of the instrument within the research trajectory of second-language acquisition be suspended until the instrument has been revised.
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