Reformulating Reading Materials to udFoster Students’ Critical Thinking

摘要

This paper proposes the formulation of reading materials to meet the need to improve students’ critical thinking. It is based on Bloom’s revised taxonomy covering six levels of critical thinking namely remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating and creating. Reading is an effective way of engaging students in critical thinking which can be done either through printed or electronic materials. This enables teachers to incorporate between the teaching of critical thinking and language skills. The idea to incorporate between the two mainstreams is rooted from the new paradigm of 4R basic competences (reading, writing, arithmetic, and reasoning) stated in the international benchmark of education. In this view, learners are equipped with critical thinking skills needed to support their current and future life economically, socially and culturally. Therefore some ways to foster learners’ critical thinking which is developed through the medium of reformulated reading materials are explored using examples. The materials encourage students’ involvement to the activities suitable with the cognitive domains through a number of key verbs associated with higher order critical thinking skills which can also be done through digital materials. This process requires some phases such as material selection, evaluation and adaptation to meet the feature of critical thinking based reading materials.