An Investigation of the Use of Critical Thinking in EFL Students’ Argumentative Writing

Abstract

This study is a preliminary to the investigation of the use of critical thinking in students’ argumentative writing. More specifically, this study aims at shedding lights on students’ use of critical thinking when writing argumentative essays. To test the hypothesis that the majority of students do not have the adequate level of critical thinking that helps them to write effective argumentative essays, a written test is assigned to (30) third year students of English at the University of Mohamed Seddik Ben-Yahya. Moreover, a questionnaire is administered to the subjects of the written test. Finally, an interview is conducted with four teachers of written expression at the department of English. The findings show that the majority of students do not think critically when writing their argumentative essays. Thus, the results of this investigation confirm the research hypothesis. Further, the results also show that the majority of the students neither know much about critical thinking nor receive training to develop this skill.