Promoting EFL students’ critical thinking and self-voicing through CIRC technique in Academic Writing courses

Abstract

Critical thinking and self-voicing are two demanding skills that facilitate students to produce concise, authorial academic texts. While most writing programs and research have paid much attention to improving students’ writing achievement, less attention is given to promote these two skills in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing classrooms. This article reports a classroom-based study investigating the use of the Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC) technique to promote EFL students’ academic writing skills. It particularly examines how the CIRC technique helps to foster students’ critical and self-voicing stance in developing argumentative texts. A participatory qualitative study was employed, involving 64 undergraduate students majoring in English Education. Data were generated from the participants’ writing portfolios, observations, and the teacher’s reflections. The collected data were managed, classified, and analyzed using NVivo 12 to elicit the emerging themes. Drawing on the qualitative content analysis, the results showed that the CIRC technique helped to shape the participants’ critical thinking and self-voicing skills which were consistently demonstrated during the student-centered activities and their writing results. The participants could engage in productive writing processes, such as critical reading, note-taking, summarizing, drafting and revising composition, peer-reviewing, and other related collaborative skills. The findings indicated that the development of students’ critical thinking and self-voicing skills simultaneously affected the quality of their academic writing texts.

Applying the ‘BUCS’ strategy in grade IV of Elementary School to learn main ideas and supporting details

“…Students are conditioned in cooperative teams which are then coordinated with reading groups learning to fulfill objectives, such as reading comprehension, vocabulary, reading the message, and spelling. CIRC is a learning activity that aims to share information and obtain optimal results (Susilo et al, 2021), and increase students' reading and writing interest (Jahanbakhsh et al, 2019).…”

The Praxis of Socratic Questioning Method and Critical Thinking Skills in Learning English for Agribusiness: Students’ Sentiments

“…This hard condition which is still uncertain encourages all scholars to integrate digital literacy as a component to arise a pleasant atmosphere as well as students' selfconfidence (Asma, 2021); and thinking skills in the teaching and learning process. Mainly, T the educational practitioners are getting harder in creating future successful leaders who have the excellent skill, in particular, the high quality of thinking critically (Waugh, 2017; Suherdi, 2018;Susilo, Mufanti, & Fitriani, 2021). Yet, the evidence of the research and media report (DeVise, 2012) that critical thinking development in higher education has not been sufficient enough, even, it is still unsatisfying (Rohayati, 2017;Belkin 2015) For this reasons, the related stakeholders are recently being intrigued to introduce proposals, in particular, those who are involved in the educational field, to develop YAYASAN AKRAB PEKANBARU Jurnal AKRAB JUARA Volume 7 Nomor 3 Edisi Agustus 2022 (283)(284)(285)(286)(287)(288)(289)(290)(291)(292)(293)(294)(295)(296)(297)(298)(299)(300)(301)(302) students' critical thinking in higher education (Bruce, 2016;Rohayati & Friatin, 2019;Rohayati & Rachmawati, 2021;Roohr et al, 2019;Bezanilla et al, 2019;O'Leary et al, 2020;Bangun & Pragholapati, 2021).…”

“…The study carried out by Makhene ( 2019) is similar to Sulaiman & Ahmed, 2020) in that the Socratic questioning method can facilitate and develop students' critical thinking. Susilo, Mufanti, & Fitriani, (2021) focused on the use of the CIRC (Cooperative As claimed by Scriven and Paul (1987)…”