Speaker
Description
Given the importance of critical thinking to language education, the contested views of Asian students’ critical thinking and the scarcity of research on this ability among Vietnamese students, this paper reports the evidence of critical thinking performed by Vietnamese EFL tertiary students. Two separate studies were conducted in American/British Literature (Study 1) and Cross-Cultural Communication (Study 2) classes in 2019-2020 and 2024-2025 academic years, respectively. Drawing on Anderson and Krathwohl’s (2001) taxonomy of cognitive levels and Barnett’s (1997) domains of criticality, critical thinking is defined in these studies as the capacity to understand, interpret and critique received knowledge, to question one’s own understanding and assumptions, and then to take action in their own life-worlds and beyond. 30 reflective journals of 15 students in Study 1 and the recordings of 15 group discussions of a culture bump (Study 2) were analysed to look for the evidence of the students’ critical thinking, using the above framework. The studies found that the students demonstrated their critical thinking by being able to analyse, evaluate and create not only literary and cultural knowledge but also themselves and the world. Reflective journal writing and culture bump analysis were found to assist the opportunities to develop students’ critical thinking. It is implied from the study’s findings that Vietnamese EFL tertiary students showed their critical thinking if given an opportunity and that reflective journal writing and culture bump analysis can be widely used in EFL classes in particular to promote students’ critical thinking.
Biography
Nguyen Thi Thanh Binh is a lecturer of English at University of Foreign Languages, Hue University in Vietnam. She got her Doctor of Education at University of Technology, Sydney in Sydney, Australia in 2017. During her teaching English as a foreign language for Vietnamese learners, she got her interest in incorporating critical thinking in her English lessons; hence, her doctoral research is about the practices of critical thinking in Vietnamese EFL contexts. Most of her publications and research projects so far have centered on this topic. Besides, she is also interested in other research topics about critical pedagogy, cross-cultural communicative competence, and lexical use.
