Self-Nurturing and Learner Autonomy through Critical Thinking

Abstract

Critical thinking is an essential skill that contributes to effective language acquisition and strengthens autonomous learning. Applying critical thinking enables learners to unfold the multiple layers of meaning hidden in discourse and leads to better comprehension. Besides, it equips learners with the necessary tools and techniques to facilitate uninhibited self-expression using the target language in speaking and writing.   However, language instructors do not often tap this vital resource which is pivotal to successful education and career. Therefore, incorporating critical thinking skills in language education needs to be a regular and consistent process that underpins the approaches, methods and techniques of cognitive development and language acquisition. This paper highlights the importance of exploiting critical thinking in education in general and the English language pedagogy in particular. It confirms the hypothesis that activities that promote critical thinking can make language classrooms more interactive and learner centred as they help nurture students' intellectual capacities and foster learner autonomy. In addition to discussing the salient characteristics of a critical thinker, it also suggests certain classroom activities that could be fruitfully exploited to enhance the learners' critical thinking skills. Finally, this concept paper proposes that any teaching/learning material can be effectively used to teach critical thinking if appropriately adapted and finetuned to meet the purpose.