Students' Reasoning and Fallacies in Indonesian EFL Classroom

摘要

This study is about 30 students' ways of logic and reasoning in English language learning analyzed through HOTS-based questions in a private senior high school context in West Sumatera, Indonesia. All students were in the first grade who just began their first semester in the school. First, class observation was done. A field note was used to write down the process of teaching and learning a descriptive text during the observation done in two meetings. It was found that the teacher explained some easy reading and answering skills related to reasoning skills during the two meetings. Then, students' worksheets were collected to be later analyzed. Next, a stimulated recall interview was conducted to investigate students' responses toward their reading and answering techniques as well as their difficulties in reasoning. To increase the reliability of the students' categorization of reasoning and fallacies, I was helped by an inter-rater who works as a lecturer in a Public University whose research interest is also on HOTS. The findings showed that about two-thirds of all students' answers in this study contained poor reasoning and fallacious statements meaning that they had not been able to have HOTS in understanding the descriptive text given. The findings also revealed that students' understanding of vocabulary and good comprehension of the overall text determined students' thinking ability.