Questão 2813703

1. UNDERSTANDING CRITICAL THINKING IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING
2. CLASSROOM
3. 
   
4. By Anderson Francisco Guimarães Maia
6. So what happens to thinking when you attach the word critical to it? Is this another
7. Newfangled label that promotes a novel pedagogy or method for purely comercial
8. reasons or other ulterior motivations without substantially affecting learning? Is this label
9. bringing into English language teaching (ELT) something extraneous to communication
10. skills, such as political causes and social concerns? We in the language teaching
11. profession are rightly suspicious of anything that claims to be new, fashionable, or
12. Revolutionary nowadays. For example, “Critical thinking” is definitely one of the
13. Watchwords in today’s English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom; however, what do
14. teachers really think about the issue?
15. In order to investigate what EFL teachers in Brazil think about “critical thinking”, I
16. recently conducted a survey with statements about the topic to which teachers were
17. asked to agree or disagree using a 5-point scale. As a result, three major myths about
18. critical thinking were found to be most common among Brazilian EFL teachers.
19. Myth 1: Critical thinking should take place at the end of a lesson, after
20. language has been taught.
21. More than 70% of Brazilian EFL teachers declared to strongly agree that critical
22. thinking takes place during language practice only. A strong belief among these teachers
23. is that critical thinking is a result of using the language in speaking, listening, reading, or
24. writing; not embedded in the language learning process.
25. Critical thinking or higher order thinking is a concept based on learning taxonomies
26. such as Bloom’s taxonomy (Anderson et al, 2001). The idea is that some types of
27. learning require more cognitive processes than others. In Bloom’s taxonomy, for example,
28. skills involving analysis, evaluation, and synthesis are thought to be of a higher order,
29. requiring different learning and teaching methods, than the learning of facts and concepts.
30. As a consequence, it is possible for teachers to incorporate higher order thinking
31. throughout the integration of language skills in the learning process.
32. Myth 2: Critical thinking is a consequence of students’ mainstream
33. education in Portuguese. There is not enough time to work it in Language
34. Institutes.
35. The survey conducted also pointed out that 56% of Brazilian EFL teachers either
36. mostly or totally agree that critical thinking is a result of schooling in students’ native
37. language. Unlike the first myth presented, this second misbelief goes beyond the
38. classroom walls. It claims that critical thinking is a result of learners’ mainstream
39. education only and that language institute programs are too busy to support higher
40. order thinking skills. In fact, such programs can promote critical thinking in various ways as
41. students have been learning in diverse ways themselves.
42. One way is through well-designed communicative language classes where the
43. choice of linguistic forms is a consequence of contextual demands. Another way is by
44. offering alternative programs related to English learning outside the classroom. For
45. example, reading clubs, chat cafés, karaoke sessions, movie exhibits, and drama clubs,
46. to name a few. In programs like these, learners may have the opportunity to use higher
47. order thinking by comparing and contrasting cultures, discussing cause and effect of
48. social events in the world, identifying whole and parts in famous landmarks, or just
49. summarizing the ideas from a movie.
50. Myth 3: To teach critical thinking means to teach learning strategies.
51. According to the survey conducted, 63% of EFL teachers in Brazil mostly or totally
52. agree that teaching critical thinking is the same as teaching learning strategies. In this
53. regard, it has been previously noted that teaching critical thinking is the explicit and
54. monitored use of higher order thinking skills such as understanding, synthesizing, and
55. analyzing. Teaching learning strategies, on the other hand, entails explicit and monitored
56. use of mechanisms used to foster learning.
57. 
    
58. Text extracted from https://www.richmondshare.com.br/understanding-critical-thinking
59. -in-the-elt-classroom/ Accessed on April 28, 202

While discussing Myth 1, the author advocates for the incorporation of Critical Thinking at all stages of a foreign language lesson. As a consequence of this idea, it is correct to imply that: