SKKN some pre reading activities to enhance the grade 10 students’ critical thinking skill

Benefits of using pre-reading activities to enhance the students’ critical thinking skills 4 2.3.. Some principles to design pre-reading activities to enhance the students’ critical thin

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PART I: INTRODUCTION 1

II AIMS, SCOPE, OBJECTS AND METHOD OF THE STUDY 2

1.2 Importance of critical thinking skill 3

1.3 Characteristics of critical thinking 3

2.2 Benefits of using pre-reading activities to enhance the students’

critical thinking skills

4

2.3 Some principles to design pre-reading activities to enhance the

students’ critical thinking skills

4

1 Situation of students’ critical thinking skills at my school 5

2 Situation of teaching students’ critical thinking skills at our

school

5

3 Situation of teaching and learning reading skill and pre-reading

stage in reading lessons at our school

6

1 Sample application 1 (Unit 1: Family life) 8

2 Sample application 2 (Unit 2: Your body and you) 11

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3 Sample application 3 (Unit 3: Music) 14

4 Sample application 4 (Unit 4: For a better community) 16

5 Sample application 5 (Unit 5: Inventions) 19

6 Sample application 6 (Unit 6: Gender equality) 21

7 Sample application 7 (Unit 7: Cultural diversity ) 23

8 Sample application 8 (Unit 8: New ways to learn) 25

9 Sample application 9 ( Unit 9: Preserving the environment) 28

10 Sample application 10 (Unit 10: Ecotourism ) 30

SURVEY Class:………

Sex: male / female

Years of learning English:………

helps students to process information in the life reasonably and predict results accurately, so I have been trying to carry out effective activities with the aims of forming and enhancing students’ critical thinking in the reading lessons in Tieng anh 10

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Please answer the following questions by circling the options you choose (A, B

or C) to show your opinion about critical thinking and its effect on your life

Question 1: Critical thinking is an important skill

A Yes B No C Not sure

Question 2: You have many difficulties in making decisions by yourself

Question 3: You are good at processing and evaluating information

Question 4: You always make questions immediately when you get information

Question 5: It is necessary to think about the explanations and assumptions for our choices

Question 6: English lessons have great influences on your ways of thinking

Question 7: The others’ thinking is important to you

Question 8: You are patient enough with the complexity

Thank you for your co-operation

Appendix 2: AFTER INTERVENTION SURVEY

SURVEY Class:………

Sex: male / female

Years of learning English:………

I have applied pre reading activities to form and enhance students’ critical

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thinking (Tieng Anh 10) To check how your opinion about critical thinking and its effect on their life have changed, please answer the following questions by circling the options you choose (A, B or C)

Question 1: Critical thinking is an important skill

Question 2: You have many difficulties in making decisions by yourself

Question 3: You are good at processing and evaluating information

Question 4: You always make questions immediately when you get information

Question 5: It is necessary to think about the explanations and assumptions for our choices

Question 6: English lessons have great influences on your ways of thinking

Question 7: The others’ thinking is important to you

Question 8: You are patient enough with the complexity

Thank you for your co-operation

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PART 1: INTRODUCTION

I REASONS FOR CHOOSING THE TOPIC

In the globalization era, with the swift development of science and technology, the information exploration has great influences on the life Beside its huge advantages, it is stated that easy access to the internet has made information about everything available unstructured and unorganized The mixture of valid and reliable information with hoax requires the man to categorize, select and examine it carefully This is difficult for the young to do because they are not mature enough and lack of life experiences

During the teaching career for more than ten years, observing our students’ progress, we have realized that most of them tend to live more independently, solve problems and make decisions by themselves However, they encounter many difficulties when doing those For examples, to choose jobs, the students often follow trends and believe in the advertisements without thinking about their abilities and potentials This leads to the consequence of high unemployment rate

in the society Another common problem is that when they read some information

in the internet, they do not know whether it is true or false, official or not As a result, they lend the crimes a hand to do bad things such as disturbance, reaction… In addition, most of the students are trustful and not good at processing the information Therefore, they often get cheated and provide hackers with their personal information to appropriate possessions Honestly, the main reason of these things is due to the students’ one-sided thinking Reflecting on this for a long time, we think the best way to solve it is encouraging students to read much and teaching them to think critically By this way, our students can get much knowledge of the life and have habits of considering everything multi-dimensionally

Knowing that critical thinking is hard to teach and learn but is not unable It needs practicing daily and the students must read much to have good background knowledge However, the fact is that the reading texts in the textbook are rather long and have many new words and specialized words, which makes the students afraid of reading It is true that they are not as attractive as online entertainment games on the internet Therefore, to stimulate the students’ reading and to be better at critical thinking, the pre- reading stage plays a prior and important role

in a reading lesson In fact, the pre- reading stage is often thought to activate students’ background and provide them some useful language However, at this stage, the students should also be boosted their curiousness to read and motivated their critical thinking It means that we have to design suitable and interesting activities to demand these requests With this solution, we hope our students will

be excited about reading and become critical thinkers to achieve successes in the life

For the reasons above, from the beginning of the school year 2020- 2021,

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we have carried out a study with the topic “Some pre-reading activities to

II AIMS OF THE STUDY

- To stimulate students’ reading, and to form and practice students’

critical thinking skills through pre-reading activities in reading lessons

III SCOPE OF THE STUDY

- Focus on pre-reading activities of the reading lessons in the textbook Tieng Anh 10

PART 2: CONTENT

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I THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1 Critical thinking

1.1 Definition of critical thinking

Many experts have proposed definitions of critical thinking Ennis (2011) suggested that critical thinking is reasonable and reflective thinking focused on deciding what to believe or do This is similar to Ruggiero (2012) who suggested that the main idea involved in critical thinking is evaluation Ruggiero claimed that critical thinking is a process by which we test claims and arguments and determine which have merit and which do not Therefore,

to think critically means to evaluate the correctness, the merit, and the validity

of claims or arguments Critical thinking is used to pass judgment on any information, explain the reasons, and able to solve the problem of the unknown; so that each individual is able to understand any content or information on a particular thing Critical thinking includes skills in conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing and evaluating information

to reach an answer or conclusion According to Zane, 2013, the essence of critical thinking is the interpretation, analysis, inference, evaluation, explanation, self regulation

In fact, the theory of critical thinking began primarily with the works of Bloom (1956), who identified six levels within the cognitive domain, each of which related to a different level of cognitive ability They are knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthetics, evaluation Knowledge focuses on remembering and reciting information Comprehension focuses on relating and organizing previously learned information Application focuses on applying information according to a rule or principle in a specific situation Analysis was defined as critical thinking focuses on parts and their functionality in the whole Synthesis focuses on putting parts together to form

a new and original whole Evaluation focuses upon valuing and making judgments based on information Below are the Bloom’s taxonomy and its types of activities for each level

1.2 Importance of critical thinking skill

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Ownership of critical thinking skills is very essential to ones themselves whether in developing peaceful daily life or for continuing study at higher level It

is one of the most important skills in the 21st century and the desirable objective of the overall general natural 2020 education program Today, we are living in a world of problems- social problems, economic problems, political problems, educational problems…etc To solve these minutest problems requires critical thinking skills One, who cannot think, may not be able to do those We need to be

a critical thinker for study at higher level Critical thinking helps the study in the higher level easier to accomplish We need to be a critical thinker to ensure that we don’t make wrong and misleading judgment in our community and live in a more peaceful situation in community To sum up, critical thinking is necessary in every area of life andis the key factor to make the life happier in the 21st century

1.3 Characteristics of critical thinking

Critical thinkers are identified to be:

recognizing their limitations, and being watchful of their own errors

- Regard problems and controversial issues as exciting and challenging

complexity, and are ready to invest time to overcome confusion

- Base judgments on evidence rather than personal preferences, deferring judgment whenever evidence is insufficient, and revise judgment when new evidence reveals error

listen attentively, even when they tend to disagree with the other

person

- Recognize that extreme views (whether conservative or liberal) are seldom

view

- Practice restraint, controlling their feelings rather than being controlled by them, and thinking before acting

2 Pre- reading activities

2.1 Definition of pre- reading activities

Different researchers have provided definitions of pre reading activities Lazar defines pre-reading activities as activities that help students with cultural background, stimulate students’ interest in the story, and pre-teach vocabulary Chen and Grave point out pre-reading activities as devices for bridging the gap between the text’s content and the reader’s schemata Ringler and Weber (1984) call pre-reading activities enabling activities because they provide a reader with necessary background to organize activities and to comprehend the material

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Pre-reading activities are stated as tasks tending to focus exclusively on eliciting prior knowledge, building background and focusing attention

2.2 Benefits of using pre-reading activities to enhance the students’ critical

- To get useful language which may be used in the text

- To motivate their reading Pre-reading activities create students’ need, and help them engage in a process of discovery and to feel authorized to engage with the form and content of the text

- To increase their curiosity about the topic and the text

- To orientate and specify the topic Pre-reading activities make the reading tasks easier

2.3 Some principles to design pre-reading activities to enhance the students’

critical thinking skills

- The activities must connect the topic, the text to students’ background

- The activities should keep all students involved and engaged

- The activities should stimulate students’ curiousness about the topic

- The content of the activities must be open so that students needn’t wonder whether they are right or wrong and feel self-confident

- The activities should encourage students to apply many different aspects to solve problems

- The activities should be suitable with the time limit of pre-reading

II SITUATION ANALYSIS

1 Situation of students’ critical thinking skills at my school

Our school is located in a mountainous area of the district and most of the students come from low-income families Although they are allowed to go to school and given the best conditions to study, many of them have not tried their best and got good results There are some reasons for this Firstly, most of the students believe that even if they go to university, they are just workers in factories after graduating They cannot find their specialized jobs which they have studied Secondly, the fact is that in recent years, due to the objective reasons, the number

of students applying for our school has been decreasing, which makes the enrolment seem to be easy for students As a result, many students neglect their

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study, lack both knowledge, skills and experiences Last but not least, some parents over- indulge their children and provide them with full of riches, which leads to their thinking of enjoyment life soon In short, some of the students think about the life and future too pessimistically while others do too optimistically

In recent years, with the development of information technology, social network has great influences on the lifestyle as well as the ways of thinking of the young Students are more and more attracted to electronic devices which provide them various sources of information However, they are unable to determine whether the information is reliable or not In addition, students become more passive and easier to believe in what they see or hear on social network than in their life Honestly, they are becoming more interested in the entertainment from social network than studying and other experiential activities such as sports, reading or travelling… More terribly, some students are addicted to games and drop out of school Consequently, they seem to lack knowledge, experiences of the life and think in an one-sided way Therefore, when solving problems or making decisions, they have many difficulties and make mistakes

2 Situation of teaching students’ critical thinking skills at our school

As a matter of fact, critical thinking is still something quite unfamiliar to both the teachers and students at our school Although they probably know how important it is, they do not know how to practice and possess it Sometimes, both

of the teachers and students may practise critical thinking but they only do at low order-thinking In the case of passive students, the teachers are the only ones who speak and express their ideas or opinions Such teachers expect their students to do

as they are told They mainly focus on the simple tasks available in the textbooks This way destroys the opportunities for forming and developing critical thinking skills Furthermore, teaching critical thinking skills is hard and time- consuming and the teachers need be patient Therefore, it seems to be ignored by both teachers and students

3 Situation of teaching and learning reading skill and pre-reading stage in reading

lessons at our school

Obviously, the students’ thinking way and living conditions have great influences on their purposes and target of study In fact, many of our students learn English with the only aim to pass the national GCSE exam, so they mostly focus

on studying pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar They even feel it hard to remember all the required knowledge for different exams More excessively, they

do not care about what the teachers have said because they are lack of study motivation

It comes as no surprise that the students’ thinking way and study purposes lead the teachers of English at my school to nearly the same way of teaching the language We always try to fulfill the knowledge in textbooks to our students

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Furthermore, we often provide as many practice exercises related to the GCSE exam as possible with the aims of helping students revise and learn by heart the knowledge With the help of modern technology, many lectures designed by PowerPoint have been given to students The teachers also use interesting activities such as games, quizzes, role-plays…to stimulate students They have been trying

to apply new teaching methods to help students improve their language skills which consist of reading, listening, speaking and writing Hence, the quality of the lectures has been considerably raised and it plays an important role in the results of the students in the exams

In reading lessons, the teachers at my school often adapt the activities given in textbooks so as to make them simpler for our students and the lessons more interesting, and to attract their attention to the lessons as well Nevertheless, because of our students' poor ability and long or difficult reading texts, in pre-reading stage the teachers usually spend almost the time on providing students some useful language such as vocabulary, grammar monotonously Even the teachers often choose yes/no questions to lead in and orient the texts in order not to waste of time However, these methods of teaching and learning can hardly motivate students’ reading and enhance their critical thinking

III SURVEY

1 Survey and the results

At the beginning of the school year 2020-2021, we have carried out the survey containing 8 statements related to students’ behaviors, competences which are formed by critical thinking skills The students expressed their opinions with these statements The survey was done by 115 students from three classes 10A4, 10B2, 10C2 of our school twice One was at the first semester of the tenth form (before teaching pre- reading with activities improving students' critical thinking skills) and the other was at the end of the second semester (after using these activities) The table below shows the result of the first survey

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4 You always make questions immediately

when you get information

5 It is necessary to think about the

explanations and assumptions for our

choices

6 English lessons have great influences on

your ways of thinking

2 Findings from the survey

The survey shows that before using the adapted activities, most of students seem not to care much about critical thinking skill Even though they know critical thinking skill is important, they are not sure whether they possess it or not Most of them find it difficult to make decisions by themselves They agree that we should think about the explanations and assumptions for our choices The fact is that they are not good at processing and examining information Moreover, most of them do not care about the others’ thinking and ideas Clearly, every English lesson they learn often mainly focuses on knowledge and language skills and does not influence students’ thinking and attitude As a result, they can hardly obtain critical thinking skills through English lesson

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IV SOLUTIONS AND IMPLEMENTATION

1 Sample application 1 (Unit 1: Family life)

 Aims:

- Extend some more knowledge about the household chores

- Memorize, extend and use the lexical items related the topic

- Reading for general information about the household chores and duties

- Build and stimulate prediction and conservation skills

- Collaborate and build and stimulate students’ critical thinking, problem solving skills through the activities “describe, interpret, evaluate” and “the best title finding”

- Build students’ imagination, creativity, collaboration and communication

- Being active to broaden and percept the knowledge

- Be aware of responsibilities for household chores in the family

- Build the love for the family

- Encourage students to study hard

- Collaborate and build enthusiasm and effectiveness in pair work and group work

- Extend students serious learning attitudes, love learning English, participate

in learning activities energetically and actively

 Type of work: Group work, pair work

 Technique: The activity “describe, interpret, evaluate” (“ see, think, feel”)

 Preparation: The pictures about the family doing the household chores ( in textbook) and a poster of questions

 Procedure:

Teacher’s and students’ activities Content and products

Activity 1: Talk about the picture

 Step 1: Giving the task

- T introduces the task to St: T gives

St a poster including 3 questions and

the picture about the family doing the

Activity 1: Talk about the picture

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household chore in the family (in the

textbook)

- T divides the class into groups of 6,

answer 3 questions about the picture

Which group talks about the picture

most will be the winner

( Question 1: Sts only describe the

picture, do not give their opinions)

 Step 2: Completing the task:

- Sts discuss in groups and write their

answers on the papers

 Step 3: Reporting the result

- T asks Sts to answer the question 1:

What do you see in the picture?

- Sts give answers without their

opinions about the picture (only their

- Sts answer the question 3: How

would you feel if you were a member

* Lead to the activity 2: Those are

benefits when every member of the

family shares the household chores

Now please scan the text and answer

the question: what is the text about?

Activity 2: Find out the best title

 Students’ activity

 Suggested answer:

household chores

- The mother is cleaning the fridge

- The father is cleaning up the table

- The children are cleaning the floor and washing dishes

- They are in the kitchen

- The husband wants to express his care and love to his wife

- The mother is busy, so the household chores need sharing

- Parents want to be good examples for children

- Every family member is happy

Activity 2: Find out the best title

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- T introduces the task to St: T shows

the text on the screen and asks Sts to

scan the text for 2 minutes then

discuss to find the title in pairs

 Step 2: Completing the task

- Sts scan the text for 2 minutes, then

work in pairs to discuss to find the

answers

- T calls some Sts to give the answer

and explain the reasons

 Step 4: Assessing the

performance

- T observes Sts’ performance and

answer

 tudents’ activity

- Extend some more knowledge about acupuncture

- Reading for general and specific information about acupuncture

- Collaborate and build and stimulate students’ critical thinking, problem solving skills through the activity “KWL chart”

 Attitude:

- Be aware of acupuncture and their health care in the life

- Appreciate their heath

- Collaborate and build enthusiasm and effectiveness in group work

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- Extend students serious learning attitudes, love learning English, participating

 Type of work: Group work

 Technique: The activity “KWL chart”

 Preparation: A picture about acupuncture, posters of the KWL chart and marking pens

 Procedure:

Teacher’ and Students’ activities Content and products

Activity 1: The KWL chart

- T introduces the KWL chart and

how to use the chart

- T shows a picture about acupuncture

and asks Sts what they know about

the picture ( In case Sts have no idea

about the picture, T should ask them

some simple questions)

- T divides the class into groups of 6

and gives each group a poster of the

KWL chart

- T asks Sts to discuss what they

know about acupuncture and write on

the column K

- Sts discuss about the picture and the

topic in groups of 6 and write what

they see and know about acupuncture

on the column K for 5 minutes

- T asks Sts to share their ideas and

writes on the column K of the

teacher’s chart

- T invites Sts to look closer at the

picture about acupuncture and

wonder out aloud with Sts about it

Then T suggests Sts to make an

* Suggested questions about the picture

2 What can you see in the picture?

3 Who often use it?

4 How do people often feel after using it?

* Students’ activity

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- T asks Sts to turn back their groups

and discuss what they want to know

about the topic for 3 minutes

- Sts discuss what they want to know

for 3 minutes and write on the column

W

- T calls Sts to share their questions

with the class T asks Sts if they have

answers for the questions If they do

not know or are not sure about the

answers, T writes on the column W

 Step 4: Assessing the performance

answers

* Lead in the activity 2: To know

more about acupuncture, we will read

the text Before reading the text, we

have some related lexical items

Activity 2: Pre-teach vocabulary

- T leads Sts to vocabulary related to

the topic: To answer those questions,

tell me some lexical items related to

the topic

- Sts list some lexical items related to

the topic (maybe in English or

Vietnamese)

- T asks Sts to repeat lexical items

many times, explain their meaning,

use them in context, and write them

on the board

- T suggests other important lexical

items

- Sts give the lexical items related to

* Suggested KWL chart

Activity 2: Pre-teach vocabulary Harmony yin and yang The root

function

reasons for effectiveness technique

healing capacities acupoint untreatment

side effects electric medical device

soreness slight bleeding discomfort

ACUPUNCTURE

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the topic

 Step 4: Assessing the performance

- Extend some more knowledge about the topic “idols”

- Reading for specific information about acupuncture

- Interest in the entertainment formats

- Collaborate and build and stimulate students’ critical thinking, problem solving skills through the activity “timeline” and “prediction” activities

- Be aware of the entertainment formats and idols in the world

- Build the love for their idols and life

- Collaborate and build enthusiasm and effectiveness in pair work and group work

- Extend students serious learning attitudes, love learning English, participate

 Type of work: Group work, pair work

 Technique: The activity “timeline” chart

 Preparation: Pictures about idols and logos, posters of the timeline chart

 Procedure:

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Teacher’s and students’ activities Content and products

Activity 1: Matching the timeline

chart

- T introduces the task: The timeline

chart is about the significance of

some events in four years These are

pictures which accompanied with

these events Now discuss in groups

to match the pictures with their

years when they happened

- T divides the class into groups of 6

to discuss about the pictures, events

and years T delivers the sets of

pictures and the timelines for each

group

- Sts work in groups of 6 to discuss

about the pictures, events and years

Then Sts match the pictures with the

years Sts should focus on the

questions:

he/ she do?

2 What is he/she famous for? In

which event? When did the event

happen?

- T goes around to help Sts if they

need

- T asks Sts to show their timeline

charts on the board and talk about

their choice (T encourages Sts to

give more information about these

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performance

answers, explanations

*Lead in the activity 2: To check

your understanding about the

timeline chart, let’s make the

sentences using the information in

the timeline chart Then predict if

the sentences are T/F/NG in the text

Activity 2: Predicting T/F/NG

information

- T asks Sts to base on the timeline

to make sentences about the topic in

pairs

- Sts make the sentences about the

idol basing on the timeline in pairs

- T calls some Sts to speak out their

sentences and write on the board

performance

answers

 Students’ product

Activity 2: Predicting T/F/NG information

1 The first idol programme was held in in the United Kingdom in 2001

2 American idol started in 2002 by Simon Fuller

3 The first Vietnam idol in 2007 came from America

4 Ya Suy was the winner in the fourth Vietnam idol

 Students’ activity

4 Sample application 4 (Unit 4: For a better community)

 Aims:

- Extend some more knowledge about volunteer works

- Reading for general information about the reasons for doing volunteer

Tiêu đề	Some Pre-Reading Activities To Enhance The Grade 10 Students’ Critical Thinking Skill
Tác giả	Nguyễn Thị Thu, Nguyễn Thị Phượng
Trường học	Trường THPT Đô Lương 2
Chuyên ngành	Tiếng Anh
Thể loại	Sáng Kiến Kinh Nghiệm
Năm xuất bản	2020-2022
Thành phố	Nghệ An

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Số trang	42
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