Page 40 - ELG2001 Jan Issue 468

El•Gazette 468.qxp_El•Gazette 468 08/01/2020 15:59 Page 40

REVIEWS .

CRITICAL THINKING IN ELT:
A WORKING MODEL FOR PIXABAY
THE CLASSROOM
Paul Dummett and John Hughes
National Geographic Learning, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-357-04472-8

uch has been made of critical
thinking in recent years, most
of it only implicit, and I must
Madmit to having approached
this title with a degree of skepticism; surely
even half-decent classroom practitioners
encourage their learners to think critically, or
am I missing something? Considering the
largely fool-proof teaching material that
encourages almost robotic teaching these
days, it’s hard not to at least provoke learners
to analyse and reflect. Or are things really
that simple?
Chapter One establishes a working
definition of critical thinking along with a
model for applying this to the ELT classroom.
Introduced to illustrate the latter are Bloom’s
1956 taxonomy, along with its 2001 updates.
conclusions regarding a text, has been New ways to
The authors explain how the critical thinking
approach of getting learners to reflect in a
rational way, in order to come to reasonable
inhibited by the lack of a working model, one
encourage critical
which they outline in terms of higher- and

…the authors
certainly have more thinking
important things to
say than most in Wayne Trotman reviews a book that aims
recent years on an
area that is generally to inject more critical thought into the
neglected. language learning classroom

lower-order thinking skills. In fact, they assumptions and implied meaning. In fact, critical thought amongst a group of learners.
adapt this continuum to run from basic this confirmed my belief that any attempt to Such tasks could easily be either taken into
comprehension onto critical thinking and develop critical thought had to take into the classroom and used immediately, or for
then creative thinking. consideration language levels: the higher, the sessions by trainers. Overall, I have to admit
The following chapter explains the more likely. that my earlier view that critical thinking
importance of integrating critical thinking Critical thinking in the productive skills is would happen anyway, even in spite of
into ELT, with regard to encouraging the focus of the next chapter, where it is mechanical teaching, was largely off target.
effective learning. Chapters following this pointed out how generating ideas and setting The presence of such titles as this on the
deal with more practical issues concerning criteria for evaluating success are key. The shelves in the language teachers’ resource
grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. final chapters cover critical thinking and area will enable this learning to take place in
With regard to the latter, the authors twenty-first century skills and literacies; a suitably structured manner, one that is sure
certainly have more important things to say perhaps the most interesting points made to make the classroom a more invigorating
than most in recent years on an area that is there relate to the internet and plagiarism. place to be, with regard to language
generally neglected, one I felt deserved a The final chapter deals with integrating production.
whole chapter; the references therein critical thinking into your lessons, and
certainly look worth following up. provides pointers on how to do this at Wayne
The next chapter deals with critical varying levels. In this and each of the Trotman is a
thinking in relation to receptive and chapters, a section called ‘Ask Yourself’ poses teacher educator
productive skills. It was interesting to note questions for the reader to reflect upon; likely at Izmir Katip
that the majority of tasks illustrated were responses appear in the appendix. Çelebi
aimed at levels B1 and above, but that’s not As a trainer of many years, I particularly University,
being unfair, since such tasks tend to focus on appreciated the several activities in each Izmir, Turkey.
higher-order matters relating to bias, chapter that illustrate how to develop more
40 January 2020