VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES
 ĐOÀN THANH HƯỜNG
ASSESSMENT OF CRITICAL THINKING IN THIRD-YEAR
EFL STUDENTS’ WRITINGS AT HANAM TEACHERS’
TRAINING COLLEGE
(Đánh giá tư duy phê phán thể hiện trong bài viết của sinh viên năm thứ
3 ngành tiếng Anh trường Cao đẳng sư phạm Hà Nam)

M.A Minor Thesis

M.A Minor Thesis

Field: English Linguistics
Code: 60 22 15
Supervisor: Phùng Hà Thanh, M.A
HANOI – 2010
v TABLE OF CONTENT Page
ACCEPTANCE
i
DECLARATION

2.1.1. Critical thinking and logic
5
2.1.2 Critical thinking and cognitive psychology
7
2.1.3 Critical thinking and tool to gain desirable outcome
8
2.1.4 Critical thinking and critical inquiry
9
2.1.5 Critical thinking and universal intellectual standards
9
2.2 Critical thinking instruction
11
2.3. Argumentative writing and critical thinking
14 CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY
17

vi
3.1. Samples and Sampling
17
3.1.1 Samples
17
3.1.2. Sampling
17
3.1.1.1. Participants
17
3.1.1.2. Topics
17

4.2.1. The display of critical thinking in students’ argumentative writings
23
4.2.2. The numbers of arguments, evidence, refutations, and fallacies in 36
students’ argumentative writings.
24
4.2.3. The differences of critical thinking elements found in two groups of
writings
25
4.2.4. Types of arguments, evidence and fallacies found in each group of
argumentative writings
26
4.2.4.1. Types of arguments
26
4.2.4.2. Types of evidence
27
4.2.4.3. Opposition recognition and refutation
27
4.2.4.4. Types of fallacies
28

vii
4.3. Discussions
30
4.3.1. Types of arguments and evidence and the reflection of the influence of
familiarity on the quality of students’ critical thought
30
4.3.2. Opposition recognition and refutation and the reflection of the influence
of familiarity on the quality of students’ critical thought
32
4.3.3. Types of fallacies and the reflection of the influence of familiarity on the

Appendix B2: Types of evidence
XXIX
Appendix B3: Opposition recognition and refutation
XXXIV
Appendix B4: Types of fallacies
XXXV
Appendix C: Rating guide
XXXIX
Appendix D: Holistic rating scale to mark an argumentative essay
XXXL
viii LIST OF FIGURE AND TABLES Page
Figure
Bloom’s Taxonomy
7
Table 1

This chapter presents the statement of the problem, research problems, research questions,
scope of the study, significance of the study, and design of the study.
1.1. Statement of the problem
From Socratic time, the ability to reason well has been regarded an important outcome of
education and training, and since 1980s, ‗critical thinking‘ has become a ‗buzzword‘ in the
intellectual circles (Fisher, 2001). Critical thinking is essential for everyone to perform
well not only in educational systems, but also in future workplaces, and social and
interpersonal contexts. Dewey (1933) pointed out learning to think is the central purpose of
education. Scriven (1985) acknowledged training in critical thinking should be the primary
task of education. They are among those who recognize human beings do not innately
possess the ability of thinking critically but acquire it through education.
Although ‗critical thinking‘ is universally accepted as a goal of education as it refers to
quality thinking, there remains a controversy around the ‗critical thinking‘ concept across
borders. As many scholars have claimed, critical thinking took roots in Western societies,
especially from the Greek culture with its related schools of academic thoughts and their
renowned philosophers. Atkinson (1997) believed that critical thinking is a tacit,
indefinable, socio-cultural practice and behavior that individuals in the U.S or Western
society subconsciously and naturally acquire. Nevertheless, many others have argued that
the social structures and values that developed in the East represented a different value
system from the West have created different conceptions of critical thinking. There is
‗individualism‘ in the West that inspires public debate, logical science with the focus on
objective observation; and there also is ‗collectivism‘ in the East leads to the individuality
suppression, more holistic view of reality with the focus on the group (Nisbett, 2003;
Davidson, 1998). These differences have put the ‗critical thinking‘ concept within the
matter of ‗culture specific‘. The students from the East may not apparently show up the
ability to reason well, but those claimed they lack critical thinking should reconsider the
cultural aspects. Gieve (1998) introduced the notions of monological critical thinking and
dialogical thinking, which pointed out the influences of education background and cultural
traits on the way Western and Eastern students exhibit their critical thinking skills. With
this approach, Gieve (1998) stated that critical thinking is hardly irrelevant or ill-suited to

whether content familiarity an influential factor on students‘ thinking process.

1.2. Research problems
This study focused on investigating and assessing the display of critical thinking in the
argumentative compositions of third year EFL students at Hanam Teachers‘ Training 3
College. Based on the evaluative views of both Western and non-Western raters, it would
reveal the extent to which Vietnamese students in their native culture context display their
critical thoughts. Then, the study would also examine the influence of familiarity on the
quality of those students‘ critical thought.
1.3. Research questions
Based on the statement of the problem, this study sought to answer the following two
major questions with the subdivided ones.
1. To what extent do third year EFL students at Hanam Teachers’ Training College
display critical thinking in their argumentative essays?
a. How well do the students reason in their argumentative writings according to the
raters‟ assessments?
b. How many arguments, pieces of evidence, refutations, and fallacies are there in 36
collected argumentative writings?
2. To what extent does familiarity affect the quality of critical thinking in those
students’ writings?
a. What are the differences of the critical thinking elements found in two groups of
writings?
b. What are the types of arguments, evidence and fallacies found in each group of
argumentative writings?
c. How do the results reflect the influence of familiarity on the quality of students‟
critical thought?


the researchers, the paper would be a referential case for further studies on the related
issues.

1.6. Design of the study
This study collected 36 argumentative essays written by third-year EFL students at Hanam
Teachers‘ Training College. Those writings were then analyzed based on criteria informed
by the research problems and research questions mentioned above. The correlative
statistics provided the correlation coefficients to check the inter-rater reliability in
assessing students‘ argumentative writings quality in general as well as on each given topic
in particular. The descriptive statistics provided quantitative analysis to support the overall
assessment on students‘ reasoning ability displayed in their argumentative writings. They
also presented the raters‘ qualitative assessment on numbers, types and differences of
critical thinking elements in two groups of essays on two different topics. 5

CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter consists of three parts: conceptions of critical thinking; critical thinking
instruction, and argumentative writing and critical thinking.
2.1 Conceptions of critical thinking
Critical thinking is a rich concept that has been developing throughout the past 2500 years
from Socrates time with an overwhelming number of definitions. Presenting a defining
statement of critical thinking is difficult as it presents different meanings for different
people and can be explored using different approaches. Thus, in order to develop an
overview on conceptions of critical thinking, it is essential to examine prominent
conceptions of critical thinking from different angles. There were some references to
literature but the emphasis was on language acquisition and the opinions of practitioners
and learners.


requirements.
Many relate critical thinking to informal logic due to its practical application to analyzing
argumentation. It is the attempt to develop logic to assess, analyze and improve ordinary
language, or everyday reasoning. The development of informal logic is tied to educational
goals: by the desire to develop ways of analyzing ordinary reasoning which can inform
general education. To this extent, the goals of informal logic overlap with those of the
Critical Thinking Movement in 1980s, which aims to inform and improve public
reasoning, discussion and debate by promoting models of education which emphasize
critical inquiry.
While critical thinking will include evaluation of arguments and hence require skills of
argumentation including informal logic, critical thinking requires additional abilities not
supplied by informal logic, such as the ability to obtain and assess information and to
clarify meaning. Many, especially Robert H. Ennis (1985) believed that critical thinking
requires certain dispositions. Understood in this way, "critical thinking" is a broad term for
the attitudes and skills that are involved in analyzing and evaluating arguments.
The list of dispositions includes such things as being open-minded, paying attention to the
total situation, seeking reasons, and trying to be well-informed. The four general sets of
abilities that are constitutive of critical thinking are clarity-related abilities, inference-
related abilities, abilities related to establishing a sound basis for inference, and abilities
involved in going about decision making in an orderly and useful way, often called
problem solving. When combined with the critical thinking dispositions, these four 7
categories are intended to cover comprehensively the process of deciding what to believe
or do, and he defined ―Critical thinking is reasonable, reflective thinking that is focused on
deciding what to believe or do‖ (Ennis, 1985, p.45)

2.1.2. Critical thinking and cognitive psychology
The second noticeable conception of critical thinking derived from cognitive psychology

2.1.3 Critical thinking and tool to gain desirable outcome
The third way to conceptualize critical thinking is to combine logic and cognitive
psychology approaches. Halpern (1996) defined critical thinking as ―the use of those
cognitive skills or strategies that increase the probability of a desirable outcome. It is
purposeful, reasonable, and goal-directed.‖ (p.33-34). It is also known as directed thinking,
against non-directed thinking, which is defined as daydreams, nightdreams, and other sorts
of thinking that are not engaged in for a specific purpose or do not involve the use of
critical thinking skills. It is used to describe thinking that is purposeful, reasoned, and goal
directed—the kind of thinking involved in solving problems, formulating inferences,
calculating likelihoods, and making decisions when the thinker is using skills that are
thoughtful and effective for the particular context and type of thinking task. In a more
extensive observation, Halpern (2003) emphasizes that ‗all the cognitive levels are under
the power of that conception, and the “critical” element of critical thinking denotes the
evaluation of thought processes and their outcomes‘ (as cited in Phung, in press). Thus, the
final and most worthy target of thinking is to achieve a desirable outcome. However, the
problem is that, Halpern (2003) also noted that desirable decisions were embedded in a
system of values. Since ‗desirable‘ is a vague term, something that is desirable to one
person might be undesirable or even conflicting to others. One‘s desire has to be framed
within certain ethical and social boundaries. She also acknowledges that thinking is only a
means to solve specific problems in particular context. Thus, as Phung (in press) pointed 9
out, this conception does not fit in educational perspective since it touched upon daily life
matter and varied in different contexts.

2.1.4 Critical thinking and critical inquiry
The fourth conceptualization of critical thinking is more or less related to the critical
inquiry and critical literacy movement, which can be roughly understood as any kind of
investigation that attends to power relations and seeks to change the current situation of

her thinking by skillfully taking charge of the structures inherent in thinking and imposing
intellectual standards upon them." (Paul, Fisher and Nosich, 1993, p.4). As observed by
Fisher (2001), this definition is interesting because it draws attention to a feature of critical
thinking on which teachers and researchers in the field seem to be largely agreed. That is,
the only realistic way to develop one‘s critical thinking ability is through ‗thinking about
one‘s thinking‘, and consciously aiming to improve it by reference to some model of good
thinking in that domain.
Paul and Elder (2006), meanwhile, offered a list of what they call "elements of thought"
with purpose, information, inferences/conclusions, concepts, assumptions, points of view,
implications/consequences, and questions. Along with those are nine suggested qualities
that make messages optimally useful including clarity, accuracy, precision, relevance,
depth, breadth, logic, significance, and fairness. By implication, they refer to quality
questions of specification, amplification, kind/category, verification/validation degree,
magnitude, motive, detail, and questions designed to probe, challenge, and motivate.
However, what make this conception remarkable is that unlike those other ones which
merely touch upon one or two fields, such as logic, psychology or socio-political, this
conception is regarded transdisciplinary since the proponents can be said to set out the
shared criteria of critical thinking for all scholastic fields else where in the world.

To sum up this part, the researcher would like to refer to two remarkable observations
about dimensions of critical thinking. Out of the two, the latter is more preferable since it
has covered up all the conceptions we have mentioned so far.
First, according to Moon‘s (2004) there are dimensions of breadth, longitudinal, and
technical. Breadth dimension refers to narrow views of critical thinking which focus
primarily on the language of argument and reasoning, or broader, viewing the
characteristics of the critical thinker as leading to a way of operating in the world.
Longitudinal dimension, which acknowledges a person‘s past and encourages development
through construction of past and new knowledge. It involves studies of critical thinking at
a particular educational stage. Technical dimension is often characterized by lists of skills


urgent worldwide. However, there is a big distance between defining what critical thinking
is and how to teach it. One cannot just push all the related theoretical wordings of
conceptions into their learners‘ head to turn them into critical thinkers. Still, as van Gelder
(2005) pointed out, college instructors often made the mistake of thinking that they could
teach critical thinking skills by teaching the theory of critical thinking. He recognized that
grasp of theory was an absolute necessity for advanced critical thinking but it was wrong
when one only taught theory, or overemphasized theory relative to practice. Skills are not a
natural outcome of theory and must be naturally develop through practice. However, 12
practice is more effective when supplemented by appropriate levels of theoretical
understanding. That is the reason why for years, keen educators have been trying hard to
find proper way to adopt the theoretical understanding of critical thinking into their
instructions to gain the most effective and productive effects.
As we have examined, the fifth critical thinking conception with Paul‘s model of universal
intellectual standards have addressed comprehensively all aspects of quality thinking.
Critical thinking from this view, as Phung (in press) pointed out “is not only about
cognitive capabilities but also about moral commitment to the critical standards and
traits‖. Accordingly, when students are taught of critical thinking, besides the knowledge
and thinking skills, they also have to learn about the intellectual standards, as well as
ethical and social values. This is great but quite an ambitious goal for educators of critical
thinking to reach because despite the universality of these intellectual standards, their
application in a specific context still depends on cultural features and other conditions.
Moreover, a thorough instruction of any subject requires systems of clear procedures to
evaluate the learners‘ achievements, which is vaguely shown in Paul and Elder‘s theory.
Their criteria are not widely applied into every critical thinking course book ever existed
because of the different cultural awareness, for example, criteria of fairness, clarity and
precision seemed to be viewed differently in Eastern and Western cultures.
The same situation happens to Bloom‘s taxonomy and the cognitive psychology related

maximize the ‗objectivity‘ of critique and argument. When people teach critical thinking
skills based on logical basis, they benefit from available logic theory, which is a tool that
show ‗what is implicit in the concepts used [in argument] and to expose contradiction‘ de
Bono (1982, p.77, as cited in Moon, 2004, p.38). He also implied that logic may have held
its popularity because, while it was considered that students should be taught how to think,
other than logic there seemed to be little to grasp hold of and to then teach – ―what set of
rules for thinking was there, apart from logic?‖ (de Bono, 1982, as cited in Moon, 2004,
p.39) The second reason, logic, together with the emergence of its branch informal logic,
provides quite an exhaustive set of procedures for evaluating arguments with detailed
explanation of given terms like premise, conclusion, etc and a full theory of fallacies. As a
result, both the coach and the coached are beneficial from it. The instructors find it easier
to teach their learners with clear-cut concepts; the learners can evaluate their own
achievements via comprehensible criteria of diversified test and assessment forms. The
educational targets of the critical instruction thus will be systematically and effectively
assessed. The criteria of informal logic for appraising critical thinking is sure more clearly
defined than those by Bloom or Paul and Elder. 14
With those reasons mentioned above, though approaching critical thinking from logic (or
more exactly, from informal logic) is quite a narrow dimension, which focuses only on the
language of argument and reasoning, instructions designed on logical basis are still
considered the most proper one used and to be used on a widest scale.

2.3. Argumentative writing and critical thinking
This part aims at the relation between argumentative writing and critical thinking in
learning language and the way people use argumentative writing to assess critical thinking.
First of all, it is necessary to look at the definition provided by Baker & Brizee (2007,
para.1) ―Argumentative writing is the act of forming reasons, making inductions, drawing
conclusions, and applying them to the case in discussion; the operation of inferring

and a good critical writer makes a good argumentative paper. Sachs (2004) pointed out the
interrelation between critical thinking and writing, especially argumentative writing, a
process of doing critical thinking and a product communicating the results of critical
thinking. As such, one can use written argumentative texts to measure critical thinking
skill. Since this paper deals with the assessment of critical thinking in writing, it will now
provide a look of several general knowledge standardized essays tests for critical thinking.
As observed by Stapleton (2001), although critical thinking has received much attention in
the second language learning field, little attention has been paid to the critical thinking
assessment test. The existing critical thinking test tend to be test specific with criteria laid
out that specifically pertain to the content of the test itself. McPeck (1990) claimed to
know of at least 26 tests designed to measure critical thinking ability, but they are often
limited to multiple-choice instruments that do not allow any probing of reasoning behind
the examinee‘s answer. The textual analysis and scoring guides for testing critical thinking
quality in written discourse seem quite rare. One of the most widely used assessments of
critical thinking in writing is the Ennis-Weir Critical Thinking Essay Test. It is a general
test of critical thinking in the context of argumentation and regarded as a diagnostic device
to identify specific area of reasoning or argumentation (Stapleton, 2001, p.514). ―It is the
only critical thinking test that asks students for a written response judging the quality of
reasoning in a piece of writing‖ (Hatcher, 1995, p.27, as cited in Paul, 2001, p.515).
According to the test‘s grading guides, there is a list of area of critical thinking
competence:
 Getting to the point
 Seeing reasons and assumptions
 Stating one‘s point 16
 Offering good reasons
 Seeing other possibilities (including other possible explanations)
 Responding appropriately

17
CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY
This chapter recites the methodology conducted in the study, including samples and
sampling, data collection, and data analysis.
3.1. Samples and Sampling
3.1.1 Samples
The samples are purposively selected since the study only focused on one of many types of
writing tasks the students had learnt during all compulsory writing courses. The pieces
chosen are written by third year students since at the time the study was carrying, they
were working on argumentative writing in their Writing 5 course. The instructor of the
course, who worked independently with the researcher of this study, provided all 36
papers. The writing tasks were carried out under time pressure during class hours to be
submitted for the course‘s evaluation requirements. The whole set of 36 writing pieces will
be found in Appendix A.
3.1.2. Sampling
3.1.1.1. Participants
Due to the nature of the study, the researcher also took purposive samplings of 36 third-
year EFL students from one same group at Hanam Teachers‘ Training College. All
students were in the first semester of their third year with the ages ranging from nineteen to
twenty-one, they all come from parts of Hanam province. All of them were taking a course
call Writing 5, and were being taught by a same teacher with same curriculum, activities
and evaluation system.
3.1.1.2. Topics
With the approval and assistance from the instructor of the Writing 5 course, 36 students
were accidentally divided into two sub-groups of equal number then each group was
assigned with writing topics prepared beforehand by the researcher. There are two topics,
one of which was familiar to the majority of Vietnamese people while the other deemed
unfamiliar. Accordingly, half of the randomly selected participants worked on the familiar
topic and the other half on the unfamiliar one. One noticeable factor is that prior to the
testing time, students had been provided with several topics including the two topics used

contain certain ideas about the situation but lack knowledge of related principles and their
application.
The familiar topic requires students to respond to the statement “Tobacco companies
should compensate smokers who have become ill as a result of smoking”. The issue of
smokers‘ demand of compensation was selected because of the following reasons. Firstly,
it was always one of the most frequently used topics in writing at any level, although the
question was modified a little. Secondly, people keep talking about smoking largely on 19
media means with its pros and cons, and the public attention has recently directed to the
rights of consumers with many as cases in which the buyers and users filed the producers.
All of the information sources related to the issue seemed close and rich enough for the
students to get used to the tone of such kind of debate and easily develop their own
arguments. The third reason was that among many topics assigned as homework, when
informally asked by the researcher „which topic would you be most ready to work on?‘ 33
out of 36 students picked the topic on smoking.
For the unfamiliar topic, the legalization of prostitution was chosen. Students were asked
to respond to the statement. “Prostitution should be legalized because it brings a lot of
benefits”. This topic was deemed unfamiliar because prostitution is forbidden in Vietnam
and people quite often avoided talking about this. As an Eastern culture, the question of
whether or not should prostitution be legal hardly ever occur to Vietnamese, let alone
discuss about it openly. Another reason for choosing it was the fact that few students
voluntarily worked on such topic.
It is believed that those two topics would provide participants a good opportunity to use
critical thinking skills to explore the topics‘ complexities. As Stapleton (2001) pointed out,
a potential criticism of using familiar content to elicit critical thinking is that it encourages
well-rehearsed reasons and evidence absorbed through exposure to the media, schooling,
and parents. Such exposure can build prejudices that tend to hinder effective critical
thinking because they can block out alternative viewpoints. On the other hand, Glaser