Part 1 introduction
1. Background to the study and statement of the problem
1.1. Critical thinking and critical reading skills in the Age of Information
In the Age of Information, people are facing up with the information overload which can
be both an advantage and a big threat. It is, therefore, necessary for people especially
youngsters to have good ability of not being drowned in the ocean of information.
Accordingly, reading, which is the most popular means of processing information, should
be taken into account. Among the amount of information needed, the questions of what to
read, how to read effectively and what to believe are worthy of readers’ consideration. In
such a situation, critical reading is an essential skill which is described by Harris and
Hodges (1981) as
a process of making judgments in reading, evaluating relevance and adequacy of
what is read, an act of reading in which a questioning attitude, logical analysis
and inference are used to judge the worth of what is reading according to an
establish standard
Critical reading which is significant to EFL students for mastering critical reading skills
will provide students with the ‘right tool’ (Milan, 1995), in short term, to enhance their
process of studying at university and, in long term, to serve them well for the rest of their
life.
A remarkable number of students and teachers, however, does not have in-depth
knowledge of critical reading, what its elements are and how to develop it. They are not
even aware of the role of critical reading in the teaching and learning process. This leads
to quite lots of problems concerning behaviorism, self discovery and other cognitive
matters. The lack of a full awareness of critical reading may result in not only teachers’
clueing in and students’ knowledge acquiring but also curriculum design or teachers and
students interaction in classroom, etc.
In the history of pedagogy, methodology, psychology and humanism, a variety of
research on critical thinking and its related problems and solutions have been conducted.
In a very humble way, this research is aimed to follow the founding fathers of the field to
bone up the most basic knowledge about critical thinking skill.
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various forms such as formal lectures, discussions, debates, story telling, text reading or
simply informal talks. The benefits of orientation activities are: 1. creating opportunities
for students and teachers and students themselves to get to know each other to exchange
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experiences, attitudes and opinions. 2. orienting students towards college study methods
in general and effective ways to learn the four language skills in particular. Such
preparation has been proved to respond to actual needs of students during their early days
at college.
In addition, the syllabus gives space for the teachers to design or collect further reading
by themselves. Nevertheless, it is not an easy task due to time restraints and the lack of
reference sources.
In the syllabus, there are three revision weeks. Traditionally, teachers give students the
tests of the previous years to do as a way of practicing reading under time pressure and
developing examination skills. In fact, this activity is relevant if the biggest purpose of the
course is merely to get good marks in the exams. However, if developing critical thinking
and critical reading skills for students are also the aims of the syllabus, then more
thought-provoking tasks and activities would have to be included.
1.2.3. The critique of the material
‘Practice your reading skills’ is the only in-use-textbook which is designed, adapted and
combined by a group of teachers in the Division. The use of only one course book in the
whole semester may reduce the chances for students to experience different view points,
beliefs and values, build up their own knowledge, reflect their attitudes, assumptions and
even prejudices through comparing and examining which inevitably may bring about the
biased, subjective way of thinking being the killer of critical thinking. Therefore,
introducing appropriate materials as supplementary to the main textbook is one of the
researcher’s tasks in this study.
Followings is a brief overview of major strengths and weaknesses of the material
a. The strengths
Comparing to the course objectives the syllabus is quite suitable. The core course book
‘Practice your reading skills’ is a basic reading for pre-intermediate students of English.

researcher’s tasks in this study.
The first apparent problem is the gap between theoretical objectives and reality. Being one
of the four language courses in Division 1, reading must fit the objectives of the
curriculum which attempts to reach the standard of the first level set by Cambridge
University Local Examinations Syndicate. That means after finishing the first year,
students will reach the standard of PET level (pre-intermediate). However, the level is
only suitable for listening and speaking skills. Many first year students are so good at
reading that they can easily finish the First Certificate reading texts. Therefore, it is a real
challenge to design a material that is able to fit the curriculum as well as students’ ability,
interests and demands. The book must contain multi-level reading texts from beginning to
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first certificate, from simple to more complicated. Within this light, the content, is not
cohesive because some texts and exercises are quite easy while some others are quite
difficult and more advanced.
To fix the problem, teachers have to be flexible when using the material in class. They
have to design some extra activities and questions for the simple reading texts and
simplify the difficult tasks by helping students with new words, giving the instructions
carefully or asking students to work in group where strong students can help weaker ones
with the difficult tasks. The teachers can also classify the tasks by giving the more
challenging tasks to stronger students and less difficult ones to weaker students.

The second problem area is the content of the material. The text types in the material are
quite variable, from short stories, specialized articles, reports, reviews, letters,
advertisements to diagrams or pie charts. The reading texts are quite different in level of
difficulties and complication and used mostly to present or practice new language,
general comprehension and information-finding. To examine the content of the material
carefully, the researcher has based on the two following categories: task types, stages of
reading and possibility of combining with other skills (listening, speaking and writing).
That action helps bring about the opportunities to comment on the criticalness of the
material which will be discussed in the later part.

not meet the intellectual demands of high level cognition skills and can only be
categorized as Right There QARs whose answers are obvious in the text. To answer this
type of questions, students only have to use low level cognitive skills.
If it is to develop students’ critical reading skills, the book needs a lot of further
improvements. Among all ten units analyzed, there is only one passage in unit 21 – Arts
that contains the ‘criticalness’. The activities require students not only to comprehend but
also dig down into the author’s points, the referencing devices and the organization and
purposes of the ideas. The tasks given out also have a very close relationship with other
critical and communication skills beside simple reading. Doing the tasks, students have to
write, reflect, express and compare.
Transfer potential involves the manner in which the students practices or uses the task of
interest. The second criterion, which involves exploring right or wrong answers,
explaining divergent answers and identifying clue words, asks about three aspects:
practicing, awareness and acceptance. In the first place, students must be given
opportunities to practice the transferring skills. To beginners, this stage must be
controlled by the teacher who has the responsibility of stating the connection between the
text and other non verbal materials. Besides, students are also instructed to know where to
transfer and how to transfer. In order to have a detailed plan to transfer, the material
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should be systematic and well-instructive. Yet, the material lacks both features as it was
designed without a consistent format and united language proficiency. Some tasks are too
easy, some others are too complicated. Some types of exercises are too long and some are
repeated. Certain instructions are even incorrect in grammar and not clear enough to
understand. Moreover, the connection between the texts and other skills is not clear. That
leads to the lack of transferring the tasks and the knowledge.
Amount of reinforcement is the provision of opportunities to apply new understanding in
meaningful and interesting contexts. This is considered more important for critical
reading than other reading tasks. To obtain this criterion, the material must be designed
with variety of activities to develop analyzing skills, determining sequence, etc with
variety of activities. Some reading materials in the world which are accredited as good

listening skills as well, thought-provoking activities are seldom found in their textbook.
It is obvious that most first year students of English Department are well selected, and
eager to learn since they all have to go through a very demanding entrance examination.
Among the four language skills taught in the first year, reading seems to be the strongest
skill for most students because it was more frequently practiced when they were still at
school to serve the main purpose of passing the university entrance examination.
However, once they have to learn how to read critically, reading is no longer too easy.
Usually in the orientation week, first year students have chances to express their own
opinions about reading and they all agree that reading is very important not only in
English learning but also in any content class English is used as a medium. Yet, hardly do
they know about how to develop reading skill as a cognitive and communicative skill. As
well, they do not know how to combine different strategies in reading. The effectiveness
of learning reading skills, therefore, remains a big challenge for a large number of first
year students.
2. Aims of the study
The research aims specifically at (1) investigating the attitudes of first year students and
teachers toward critical reading; (2) exploring the problems that students encounter in
studying and applying critical reading; (3) offering suitable teaching strategies in
developing critical reading skills for first year students.
3. Scope of the study
Being an action research on first year students’ and teachers’ critical reading skills, the
study is confined to critical thinking skill in reading of first year students in English
Department, CFL, VNU.
In other words, the research will help raise the awareness of first year students in the
university towards the necessity of building up and developing critical reading skills.
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With the manageable population and variants of fifty students and ten teachers in Division
1, English Department, CFL, VNU, the research will hopefully contribute to the
improvement of teaching and learning methods as well as the advancement of the
students’ cognitive ability.

Chapter 1 Literature Review
This chapter reviews the most basic knowledge of critical thinking, critical reading, the
relationship between critical thinking and critical reading and different aspects of
teaching critical reading.
1. An overview of critical thinking
1.1. The definition of critical thinking
Terminologically, critical thinking has been defined in various ways. Chance (1986 : 6)
defined critical thinking as ‘the ability to analyze facts, generate and organize ideas,
defend opinions, make comparisons, draw inferences, evaluate arguments and solve
problems’ while Mertes (1991 : 24) characterized critical thinking as ‘a conscious and
deliberate process which is used to interpret or evaluate information and experiences with
a set of reflective attitudes and abilities that guide thoughtful beliefs and actions’. Such a
difference results from the continuous changes in psychology and philosophy theories. In
1996, Scriven and Paul described critical thinking as
the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing,
applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from,
or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or
communication, as a guide to belief and action. (p. 12)
Though sounding relatively similar in some ways with the two definitions given by
Chance(1986) and Mertes (1991), this comprehensive definition got much attention from
scholars of the field because of its clarity and validity. To be more exact, Scriven and Paul
just figured out the natural feature of critical thinking as an active and practice-required
thinking process including distinctive cognitive behaviors.
In Vietnam, many people tend to have a negative view toward the common meaning of
the word ‘critical’. For them, if someone is critical, he is likely to question, to judge
severely and ready to find faults about things and people around. Therefore, in their
opinion, critical thinkers seem doubtful and never satisfied. However, the concept
“critical” is more widely known in the modern world today as “giving careful, exact
evaluation and judgments” (Cambridge Advanced Learners’ Dictionary). Those
evaluation and judgments result from inquisitive questions and doubt which are principal

one, some or all of the thinking skills effectively.

To sum up, critical thinking refers to the active, conscious mental process which employs
general principles and procedure of thinking to seek truth and judgments.
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1.2. The elements of critical thinking
The question of what the elements of critical thinking are remains controversial
depending on different research criteria. The classification given in this part is based upon
most commonly accepted categorization of critical thinking elements in literature. In this
regard, critical thinking is comprised of two basic complex elements: the cognitive skills
and the affective dispositions.
1.2.1 Cognitive skills
In the history of research on education and pedagogy, various ways to categorize
cognitive skills have been explored. Among all, the most common way is to base on the
taxonomy which was first developed in 1956 by Benjamin Bloom and revised in 2001 by
Anderson, & Krathwohl. According to the taxonomy, within three overlapping domains:
the cognitive, psychomotor and affective, the thinking process is divided into six levels in
a hierarchical order from the lowest to the highest one.
The first level is knowledge (including facts, ideas, terms, concepts, etc.) which is
obtained through communication, observation, senses and so on. According to
www.eduscapes.com, knowledge level may contain collecting, defining, describing,
identifying, showing, naming, recording, reading, copying, quoting and selecting which
are to serve the purpose of getting knowledge including dates, events, places, vocabulary,
key ideas, diagram, etc.
The second level namely comprehension (involving associating, comparing,
distinguishing, extending, interpreting, predicting, etc.) demonstrates understanding of
facts and ideas, inferring causes and consequences or transferring meaning.
Application, the third level, is problem solving by applying, classifying, changing,
relating, reporting, etc. acquired knowledge, facts, techniques and rules in a different
way.

Knowledge
organize parts of a piece of information and recognize hidden meaning and identify
components. The analysis at this level differs from that at Comprehension level as it
focuses on the meaning rather than form of a text.
Synthesizing is the act of mixing different ideas, opinions and influences to make new
ones. The new idea can be subjective, objective, equivalent or improper, original or
unoriginal depending on the quality of the ideas taken from the previous stages. One
popular question asked in the level is ‘what if’ which is used to validate the situations
after new ideas are created. Useful activities occurred in the level are combining,
composing, creating, adapting, reinforcing, generalizing and designing.
Evaluating is the step which encourages students to make judgments according to a set of
criteria without giving out real wrong or right answers. Evaluation also includes analysis
and recommending. The analysis at this higher level is different from that in the
Comprehension and Application level. In Comprehension, people analyze separate pieces
of information while in this step they judge the assumption to identify all sides of the
argument before final judgments are made. After ideas are critiqued, recommendations
will be made. Those recommendations will be analyzed continuously and the
improvements will always be suggested.
In sum, as Bloom defines the first three levels of his taxonomy as lower order thinking
levels, critical thinking (higher-order thinking skills) concerns the top three levels:
analysis, synthesis and evaluation which are obviously associated with a wide range of
complex cognitive skills and sub-skills.

1.2.2. Critical thinking dispositions
Naturally, dispositions are particular types of characters that a person has. Describing
one’s dispositions is to mention his/her habitual ways of acting. In social psychology,
dispositions are conceived as an attitude or attitudinal tendency which plays the role as
the orientation of people’s thinking and behaviors.
In productive thinking, there are two kinds of dispositions: advantageous dispositions
which have supportive influences on the growth of thinking and disadvantageous

thinks that what has worked well should be
assumed to be good enough to work
forever. That leads to the passiveness and
reluctance in thinking.
Table 1 Advantageous and disadvantageous dispositions–
As elements of critical thinking, advantageous dispositions are terminologically called
critical thinking dispositions. Obviously, there is a close relationship between critical
thinking skills and critical thinking dispositions. In other words, a person with several
advantageous characteristics such as being open-minded, analytical, inquisitive, confident
in reasoning etc. is, in most cases, a good critical thinker.
1.2.3. The basic differences between a good critical thinker and a poor critical thinker
In literature on critical thinking, many scholars make a clear distinction between critical
thinkers and non-critical thinkers (Sandy,1997:120; Driscoll, 2000:86). However, the
researcher would adopt a neutral view that almost everyone has more or less the hidden
potential cognitive skills and dispositions required of critical thinking. The only thing that
matters is the levels of critical thinking among people are various due to the different
levels of awareness, knowledge and frequencies of practicing those skills.
The following table synthesized from various sources shows the features that help to
distinguish between a good critical thinker and a poor one.
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A good critical thinker A poor critical thinker
• is supposed to have a sense of curiosity.
• is naturally skeptical.
• is an active person who always ask
questions and analyze information. In
other words, a good critical thinker is
eager to understand things thoroughly.
• is an objective person who never imposes
his own values and perceptions on
surrounding things.

false initial premises. To think critically, one must identify his assumptions and consider
their justification before presenting the ideas.
Prejudicial thinking. Prejudicial thinkers gather evidences to support a particular position
without questioning the position itself. A thinker of this type holds his very own
prejudices which are considered major obstacles to his critical thinking. Prejudices spring
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from subjective factors such as race, religion, class, ethnicity or gender. To be a critical
thinker does not mean one must leave all of his ideas. It means one should know whether
the opinions are right or wrong, suitable or unsuitable and adjust if necessary.
Emotive thinking which responds to the emotion of a message rather than the content.
Emotive thinkers always base on their sense rather than the sensibility. This way of
thinking goes completely further from logical and intellectual thinking.
1.3. Critical thinking in learning
1.3.1. Critical thinking in learning
As a saying goes ‘To learn is to think. To think poorly is to learn poorly. To think well is
to learn well’, critical thinking plays a very important role in learning as it is in close
connection with all aspects of learning. The limited scope of this study does not allow the
researcher to go into all of the aspects but just three prominent ones namely learner’s
dispositions, questioning and the making or arguments.
a. Critical thinking and learner’s dispositions
The relationship between critical thinking and learners’ dispositions are the cause and
effect relationship. In view of Ferrett (1997), a critical thinker has the following affective
dispositions:
- is able to admit a lack of understanding or information. As mentioned earlier, critical
thinking can not always lead to clear and obvious conclusions. Critical thinkers have to
accept the fact that some things may remain mysterious and will be revealed later.
- has a sense of curiosity. Having that kind of sense, the thinker will always want to find
out about the new things. He may ask questions and cling to the pursuit of the answers.
- is interested in finding new solutions. The desire to search for new things refreshes and
fosters oneself. If one is satisfied with one solution only, he will not be thirsty for the new

In realizing those six levels of the taxonomy in language classrooms, questions can be
divided into ‘lower-level’ and ‘higher-level’. Lower level questions which are at the first
three levels: knowledge, comprehension, and application mainly serve the three following
purposes:
- evaluating students’ preparation and comprehension
- diagnosing students’ strengths and weaknesses
- reviewing and/or summarizing content
(www.oir.uiuc.edu)
Higher level questions are those of three more complex levels. They are to:
- encourage students to think more deeply and critically
- solve problems
- encourage discussions
- stimulate students to seek information on their own
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In most cases, good teachers know how to categorize the questions according to the levels
of their students. For example, if synthesis questions are found to be difficult to the
students, teachers may lower the level of difficulty by asking questions simply for
analysis or application. As such, teachers’ flexibility and adaptability are of great
importance in alternating types of questions to ask to stimulate students’ thinking.
According to Bloom’s Taxonomy, questions can be categorized into six different levels.
To ask proper questions and to use appropriate teaching strategies, teachers should
determine the levels of students first and decide the suitable levels of questions that can
be classified as follows:
Level Question cues Examples
Knowledge tell, describe, collect, quote, list,
define, identify, show, who, when,
where
Who is ...? What is ?…
Where does happen?…
Comprehension summarize, describe, interpret,

judge, explain, support, conclude,
compare, summarize
Do you agree/ disagree with ?…
What do you think about ?…
What is the most important ?…
What is the significance of for the…
period of time/ the context?
Compare the story with other stories.
Table 3 Sample questions classified in six levels–
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One more thing that should be considered regarding question types is open and closed
questions. Some researchers may put closed questions into lower level levels because they
think this type of questions hinders learners’ thinking. The interpretation for this is that a
limited amount of answers is always provided before hand by teachers. Yet, in fact, both
open and closed questions can be put at any level of questioning. To illustrate for this
point, Linn (2006) offer examples of open and closed questions at both lower level and
higher level as follows:
Lower level Open question: What is an example of an adjective?
Closed question: What are the stages of cell division?
Higher level Open question: What are some ways we might solve the
energy crisis?
Close question: Given the following data, would you say
that the illiteracy is because of the government or of the
people themselves?
Table 4 Sample questions of two levels–
Stressing the teacher as a role model in making questions, Aschner (1990, cited in Wu,
1993:49) states that the teacher is ‘a professional question maker’. It’s true that good
questions of the teacher stimulate learners’ thinking and learning. Nevertheless, to be
critical learners, students must learn to be independent and self-relied. Therefore, they
need to practice questioning by themselves. The practice of making questions is quite

Critical thinking and argumentation are closely related. The foundation of critical
thinking is understanding how claims are supported or opposed by evidence. That means
a person being good at argumentation can be a good critical thinker because he must
possess essential critical thinking skills such as collecting information, synthesizing a
variety of positions and evaluating the positions. Throughout argumentation, people will
be encouraged to engage in effective critical thinking practices including
− investigating all sides of an issue
− defining the problem carefully and completely
− being willing to change a position when shown reasons and evidence
− seeking alternative solutions and divergent views in an attempt to choose
the best solution
− realizing that the best is not the same for everyone
− remaining open to others' values
− question and compare conflicting interpretations of data
− assessing the strength of reasoning and support
− evaluating conclusions
− applying values to reach or evaluate conclusions
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Additionally, the ability to make arguments demands a lot of critical thinking
components. Argumentation is not an easy skill to acquire as it asks for self-awareness,
other’s opinions understanding, reasoning, evaluating and concluding. People may think
that everyone can argue as everyone has their own opinions. However, the art of
argumentation is not simply the presentation of one’s opinions. A good argument requires
good premises, a syllogism, the skills of inducing and deducing. Conventionally, when
people sway others to accept their points of view, they often make a typical mistake of
ignoring the opinions or research of others. To correct that mistake, people have to assess
different sources to check and question others’ belief and view points.
In language classrooms, to enhance students’ ability of making arguments, there are two
important steps namely “input step” and “output step” as suggested by the writer. At the
very first stage, teachers should train students skills to identify good arguments. These

at every stage of learning. However, in initial learning stage, the role of teachers in
cultivating critical thinking is much more crucial. Building and developing critical
thinking skills for students are like partnering and instructing them to practice playing a
sport. As critical thinking is ‘a processes of active and conscious cognition’ (Critical
thinking in everyday life, 2005) which includes a variety of thinking skills, teachers play
the role as both partners and coaches who not only train the athletes but also form an
influential and effective interaction with them. Critical thinking is not likely to develop
spontaneously, it must be practiced regularly.
Among all kinds of classroom, language classrooms are one of the most advantageous
environments to develop critical thinking because they provide opportunities for students
to communicate, interact and collaborate. As Ustunluoglu (2004:3) puts it
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Second phase: During the
application of the acquired
knowledge, analysis,
synthesis and evaluation are
made.
First phase:
The result of the second
phrase leads s to the
increasing of extensive
knowledge
First phase:
Knowledge is gained and
understood
Second phase:
The extended knowledge
brings better application and
deeper and more profound
evaluation

Within another light, some scholars would consider critical thinking and critical reading
as two together in harmony. Critical thinking helps one to apply several cognitive skills to
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understand the text fully .When the assertions seem to be irrational and invalid, the reader
will examine the text as a whole, considering the viewpoints from different angles so as to
choose to accept or reject them. To be able to recognize and understand different
viewpoints, then, the reader must learn to read critically.
Yet, though considered two in one, critical thinking and critical reading are still
distinctive. That means critical thinking is not critical reading and vice versa. While
people read, they sense the text objectively without imposing the prior knowledge or
views on it. While they evaluate ideas from the texts, they will have to keep the original
meaning. According to Bernet (1989), readers must not ‘allow themselves to force a text
to say what they would otherwise like it to say or they will never learn anything new.’ (p.
213)
2.3. Critical reading strategies
Successful critical reading is a combination of the following seven strategies (Nunan,
2001 : 187 - 196). Of all, the last three ones are much more influenced by critical
thinking than the first four. Deliberately, these three strategies are more cognitive and
contemplative while the first four are more mechanical.
Previewing
Previewing is ‘learning about a text before really reading it’. Previewing enables readers
to get connotations of the text. Readers can ask questions to consider the title such as
‘What can the title tell me about the text?’. In fact, the title always provides ‘clues to the
writer's attitude, goals, personal viewpoint, or approach.’ and ‘sees what you can learn
from the head notes or other introductory material, skimming to get an overview of the
content and organization, and identifying the rhetorical situation.’ Previewing also helps
readers learn about the structure. By asking such questions ‘How it is organized?’ ‘How is
the text structured?’ and looking through the materials, readers will understand not only
the frame but also the genre of the texts.
A critical reader should always: