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Academic Writing, Promoting Speaking Listening Reading and Critical Thinking
 
Eun-Jung (EJ)
Brown
University of Texas at Arlington, United States of
America
 
 
Instead of
overwhelming ESL students with directions, by giving them tools they need for academic
writing they can cultivate their own critical thinking. Using four different
techniques to develop the critical thinking skills of factual, insightful,
rational, and evaluative thinking, ESL students in pairs or small groups will
engage in survey activity, data analysis, conducting research, and finally,
writing an academic essay.
 
 
I.              
Introduction
 
Academic writing and critical thinking skills are the
most challenging areas for ESL students.  Not only do they
have language barriers such as lack of academic vocabulary and complex sentence
structures to deliver more sophisticated ideas, typical ESL students do not yet
have the ability to think for themselves. Hence, when these ESL students face
the task of academic writing, they do not know what to do or how to develop
their academic skills. By introducing academic writing in pairs or groups in
the beginning and by empowering students with tools, teachers can provide a
safe environment to develop critical thinking skills and the daunting task of
writing academically can be less intimidating and enjoyable.  In this presentation, teachers will learn step
by step how to develop a 2-week writing project for students with academic
purposes and how to incorporate speaking, listening, reading, and writing in an
ESL writing class.
 
II.           
Background
 
ESL students in general have a hard time
with critical thinking, which is an essential part of academic writing. Typically,
student
comments about academic
writing and critical thinking skills resonate with ¡°difficult¡± or ¡°boring¡± but
combining different areas of academic skills can be fun and exciting if the students play an active role and
participate using their own interests.
In her TESOL president¡¯s blog, Questioning
Techniques to Engage Students in Critical Thinking (2014), Dr. Yulin Sun summarized four areas of thinking to
cultivate critical thinking skills in ESL students including factual,
insightful, rational, and evaluative
thinking.  For example, students question themselves
about what facts are, what those facts mean, how they are related, and why they
are important. Using
these techniques,
teachers can create a writing project based on students¡¯ interests and guide
them through a group writing project.
From another perspective, according to
Think On (2013), a student that
exhibits critical thinking will demonstrate the following behaviors: 1. Investigate and
evaluate multiple sources of information, 2. Recognize perspectives, assumptions, and biases, 3. Synthesize the information received
from various sources, 4. Analyze
information, and 5. Communicate
conclusions. This
research and writing project requires students to demonstrate every one of
these critical thinking behaviors.
 
III.         
Implementation
 
To begin, students in pairs or small groups choose
their own interest area within the topic given by their teacher and then create
a survey. Each group will independently decide which sub-topic they choose and
later share their outcomes with other the groups in class. By gathering
information through their survey, students will develop factual and insightful
thinking. Then students analyze their collected data and draw rational
conclusions. Using evaluative thinking, the last technique for developing
critical thinking, students write a five paragraph group essay using the
writing process and peer-editing. The teachers¡¯ role in this project will be
choosing members for each group based on culture, academic skills, and gender,
providing general topics and guiding through the research and writing process.
Every step of this project is based on the student group¡¯s decisions.
As an example, the teacher could assign the general
topic of education. One group might choose to learn about grading systems in
American universities. This group would create a survey of questions about the
topic, perhaps questions about how professors assign grades, course requirements
for grades, etc. The student group would then take the survey and interview
fellow students (Critical Thinking: Analyze information). After gathering the
information in the interviews, the ESL student group would then find two
additional sources of information about the topic to which to compare their
findings. The data from these interviews and the additional sources would form
the basis for their paper (Critical Thinking: Investigate and evaluate multiple
sources of information Recognize
perspectives, assumptions, and biases). Each student would be responsible to write
approximately two to three paragraphs in the final essay, an amount that is not
overwhelming to relatively new learners. The students would edit the paragraphs
from the other members of their group and bring the material together into a
single coherent essay (Critical Thinking: Synthesize information from various
sources Communicate conclusions).
 
IV.         
Observations and Conclusions
 
Before the actual final writing, students have to use
all areas of English such as speaking, listening, and reading to communicate in
their group as well as finding the additional sources. By choosing a single topic
to be shared by multiple students that use different languages, students must
use English to interact both inside and outside the classroom. In order to
create survey questions together, they have to come up with ideas together and
reach an agreement. After that, they have to do research about their topic and read
articles to explain what they found through their survey. Throughout the
process, students practice all of the skills that form the foundation of
critical thinking.
 
References
Sun, Y. (2014, June 4). Questioning Techniques to Engage Students in
Critical Thinking. Retrieved from http://blog.tesol.org/questioning-techniques-to-engage-students-in-critical-thinking/
Texas Wesleyan
University (2013). Think On: Thinking
Critically Quality Enhancement Plan.
 
The Author
 
Eun-Jung (EJ) Brown was born in Seoul, Korea and graduated from Kyung Hee
University with a BA in English Education in 1991. After 6 years of teaching
EFL in Seoul, she went to America to learn and teach ¡°real English¡±.  EJ got her Master¡¯s degree in TESOL from the
State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1998. After teaching ESL at
Missouri State University for 2 years, she moved to Texas and has been teaching
for 10 years at the ELI
at the University of Texas at Arlington as a senior instructor. She has
published 11 books about how to have fun while learning English through YBM,
LogIn, and NewRun in
Korea, and 4 of her books have been translated in China and Taiwan.