The importance of critical thinking
Discuss about the Effect of Language in Critical Thinking for Learning.
Critical thinking is an important thing for the students in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the learning. However, the ability of the critical thinking is dependent on the understanding of the subject. The ability to understand the subject is dependent on the adaptation of the knowledge by the students which is related to the understanding of the medium of language for the study (Manalo & Sheppard, 2016). It has been seen that the ability of critical thinking is dependent on the proficiency of the student in the language they are learning the subject. The main objective of this paper is to review articles in order to find the aspects and their effects regarding the language influence in critical thinking. In order to do this most of the examples are taken from the experience of the students in western countries whose second language is English.
The selected paper to be reviewed discusses about the effect of the language on the performance of critical thinking. In order to do this review the background of the research is needed to be mentioned.
In order to evaluate then information and make the decision and conclusion based on the evaluation of the information, critical thinking is an important factor. Critical thinking is dependent on proficiency of the medium of language for communication of learning. There is a argument about the dependency of the ability of critical thinking skills on appropriate methods and individual and situational factors. One of the main concerns is the influence cultural background in the critical thinking ability. In this paper the study has been conducted into two parts. In the first part 110 Japanese students were given instructions in order to perform the critical evaluation in Japanese language. In this case, no problem has occurred. The same task has given to 43 first year students who have not received the same instructions. In that case, the same pattern has been observed however, the quality of the work is low.
The research problem in this paper is to evaluate the ability of critical thinking with respect to the proficiency of the medium of language. It has been observed that the cultural background and the proficiency of the language are indicator regarding the skill of critical thinking. The main focus of this paper is on the Asian students in the western countries and the international students in those countries where English is the medium of study (Stupple et al.,2017). In some of the observation it has been seen that the English speaking students and European students whose first language is English are performing better than the Asian students in case of critical thinking.
The influence of language on understanding the subject
The research problem is relevant as the structure of the language plays an important role in understanding the situation and evaluation of the knowledge. The acceptance of the learning is dependent on the evaluation of the knowledge (Lun, Fischer & Ward, 2014). It has been observed that different languages have different structures. Sometimes students find it difficult to understand the information due to the different structure of English from their first language. This is the reason, the evaluation of the cultural background for understanding the skill for critical thinking. However, there is no significant answer for the implementation of the particular method for enhancing the critical thinking skill of the individual students.
It has been seen that the structure of the Asian language may become the constraint in the thinking ability and the ease of expressing the opinion for the individuals (García & Wei, 2014). This leads the difficulty in counterfactual thinking in Asian language rather than English. The constraint in critical thinking due to the structure of the language is sometimes referred to as e “SapirWhorf hypothesis” or the “linguistic relativity hypothesis”.
The ability of critical thinking is also dependent on epistemic belief of individuals. Epistemic belief is defined by the definition of the knowledge and the presentation and evaluation of the knowledge. Epistemic belief helps people to handle the knowledge and apply the gained knowledge in different ways (Chan & Ku, 2014). The critical thinking can be defined as the way of reflective thinking. So it can be said that critical thinking is also dependent on the ability of handling knowledge of individuals, which is also referred as epistemic belief.
Critical thinking is considered as important education goal for most of the societies and is regarded as an essential attribute for the professional and personal development of the individual. There are several issues regarding critical thinking, however, three main important issues are definition issue, measuring issue, theory issue (Heijltjesn et al.,2014). The definition issue defines the critical thinking. Measuring issues are related to the measuring of the evaluation critical thinking (Larsson, 2017). Theory issue in critical thinking is related to the expose to the knowledge and theories related to the field of study and their effect on the critical thinking.
The core research question in this paper is concerned about whether the proficiency in the language and the structure of the language has some effect in the critical thinking skill of the individuals. There are several researches and the gathering of the relevant information regarding the enhancement of the skill of critical thinking (Rodas, 2016). However, the issue regarding the critical thinking method is one of unsolved factors. In order to address this issue the research questions and finding the information regarding this question is important.
Challenges in critical thinking
The methodology for the conduction of the research is primary methodology. 110 Japanese students were selected for the evaluation. Their first language is Japanese and second language is English. They all have the English communication development course and they come from four different classes.
The findings from the research indicates the students are verbose in the English explanation of the description while in the content written by them in Japanese are more compact (Nippold et al.,2015). This indicates that the student are efficient to analyze the situation and the subject in more critically and efficient way in Japanese, while in English they follow the same structure however, the quality of writing is low (Fong et al.,2017). This indicates that the critical thinking is dependent on proficiency of the language.
Certain implications can be derived from the findings. The finding indicates that the critical thinking is dependent on the proficiency of the language. This also indicates that the structure of the language and the understanding of the language also play an important role in critical thinking. Further researches conducted and described in other journals also indicate that the processing of the knowledge is mainly dependent on understanding the complexity of the language. The issues and the methodology of the critical thinking is an unsolved problem. However, the finding of the paper can play a significant role in finding the ways and methods to improve the ability of critical thinking. The enhancement of critical thinking can be achieved using the finding of this paper.
The main limitation of this paper is that the research of this paper is concerned about the effectiveness of the language proficiency in the critical thinking (Chen, 2017). However, there are certain other factors like cognitive ability and the perception of the individuals in order to analyze the situation critically. The theory based knowledge about the situation or the study is also important for the enhancement of the critical analysis (Shamim, 2017). These factors are not highlighted in the paper. It can be said that the research topic and approach of this paper is channeled in one way.
There are several assumptions can be derived from this paper. One of the main assumptions that can be made from this paper is that the enhancement and the quality of the critical thinking is dependent on the structure and the proficiency of the language for the individuals. The students those have written the essay have taken the course in English. However, still there is a lack of proficiency between English and their first language Japanese, which reflects in their writing quality.
Research analysis on the issue
The article is relevant and provides important information about the ability of critical thinking and its dependency on the proficiency of the language. There are several articles on this subject. However, this paper has effectively described the way, the structure of the language can effect on the understanding of the subject. The main experiment has been conducted with the writing ability of the Japanese students in both English and Japanese. However, this research can be conducted on any other group of students whose first language is other than English. It can be said that this article can contribute in developing the methodology for enhancement of critical thinking of individuals.
Conclusion
The paper discusses about various aspects of critical thinking. The importance of critical thinking has been discussed in the study. The paper has given significant research on the effect of language on understanding the subject and critically analyzes the situation. In order to do this the research has been conducted on the critical thinking ability of a group of Japanese students in both English and Japanese. The findings from the paper indicate that the structure of the language has significant effect in adopting the knowledge and critical evaluation and expression of thoughts.
References
Chan, N. M., Ho, I. T., & Ku, K. Y. (2014). Epistemic beliefs and critical thinking of Chinese students. Learning and Individual Differences, 21(1), 67-77.
Chen, L. (2017). Understanding critical thinking in Chinese sociocultural contexts: A case study in a Chinese college. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 24, 140-151.
Fong, C. J., Kim, Y., Davis, C. W., Hoang, T., & Kim, Y. W. (2017). A meta-analysis on critical thinking and community college student achievement. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 26, 71-83.
García, O., & Wei, L. (2014). Translanguaging and education. In Translanguaging: Language, bilingualism and education(pp. 63-77). Palgrave Macmillan, London.
Heijltjes, A., Van Gog, T., Leppink, J., & Paas, F. (2014). Improving critical thinking: Effects of dispositions and instructions on economics students’ reasoning skills. Learning and Instruction, 29, 31-42.
Larsson, K. (2017). Understanding and teaching critical thinking—A new approach. International Journal of Educational Research, 84, 32-42.
Lun, V. M. C., Fischer, R., & Ward, C. (2014). Exploring cultural differences in critical thinking: Is it about my thinking style or the language I speak?. Learning and Individual differences, 20(6), 604-616.
Manalo, E., & Sheppard, C. (2016). How might language affect critical thinking performance?. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 21, 41-49.
Nippold, M. A., Frantz-Kaspar, M. W., Cramond, P. M., Kirk, C., Hayward-Mayhew, C., & MacKinnon, M. (2015). Critical thinking about fables: Examining language production and comprehension in adolescents. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 58(2), 325-335.
Rodas, C. R. (2016, March). The Use of Online Tutoring to Promote Higher-Level Thinking Skills in English Language Learners using Asynchronous Discussion Boards in Teacher Preparation Programs. In Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference (pp. 2286-2289). Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).
Shamim, T. (2017). Critical-thinking skills. The Journal of the American Dental Association, 148(1), 4-5.
Stupple, E. J., Maratos, F. A., Elander, J., Hunt, T. E., Cheung, K. Y., & Aubeeluck, A. V. (2017). Development of the Critical Thinking Toolkit (CriTT): A measure of student attitudes and beliefs about critical thinking. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 23, 91-100.
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