Post on 30-Jan-2015
description
Universidad Pedagógica Experimental LibertadorInstituto Pedagógico de Caracas
Departamento de Idomas ModernosSubprograma de la Enseñanza de la Literatura en
Inglés
Examining critical thinking skills in English V students at the IPC through the reading of short stories:
A process-based approach.
Caracas, July de 2012
Prof. Alexis Maizo
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Little emphasis on the development of critical
thinking. The students hardly ever read. This
reflects on the students’ performance, and slows
down their academic progress regarding the
understanding of written texts.
The teaching of literature as an integrated
aspect of the teaching of English as a Foreign
Language (EFL) is hardly ever seen these days.
This, in itself, is not a problem unless we can
perceive the effects that the absence of literary
texts may produce in students.
OBJECTIVESGeneral Objective
To develop critical thinking as an essential skill to understand texts.
Specific Objectives
•To describe the students basic traits before carrying out the experiment.
•To make use of the literary text (short stories) to promote discussions in the classroom.
•To compare the grades the students will get after the treatment with the grades the same students used to get before the experiment was carried out.
JUSTIFICATION
The integration of Literature in EFL is of
paramount importance to develop, not only
reading skills, but also consciousness regarding
the process of understanding a text syntactically
and semantically speaking.
We can assume then that the neglecting of
literature as a bridge to enhance reading (Bolivar
and Beke, 2012) in the classroom may limit the
possibilities students have to become better
readers.
By “better readers” we mean readers who,
besides understanding the formal aspects of
language (grammar, or vocabulary, for instance),
are also able to grasp meanings efficiently in
order to whether agree or disagree with the ideas
presented in the text. By doing so, students are free to take a stance
regarding the texts they read. This is the initial
step towards critical thinking that most of our
students in initial levels at Instituto Pedagógico
de Caracas (IPC) need to develop more.
HYPOTHESIS
We strongly believe that by reinforcing reading
habits in our students from early stages, we will be
also proving learners with numerous patterns they
will make use of when producing, for instance,
descriptive, narrative, or argumentative texts.
We follow the premise that the amount of
reading students get will have a strong impact on
the quality of writing they produce (Hirvela, 2007,
p. 112).
METHODOLOGY
Quasi-experimental study
As in this research we are making assumptions
to try to predict cause-and-effect relationships
or the occurrence of a phenomena, we can say
this study can be also defined as: deductive.
(Seliger and Shohamy, 1989, p. 89)
We will apply a pre and post test without a control group.There will only be a treatment group as represented in the diagram below.
Population:
Students of English as a Foreign Language
(EFL) at Instituto Pedagógico de Caracas
(IPC)Sample:
English V students from one particular section
at the IPC.
Variables
Dependent: English V students’ critical
thinking skills. Such variable can be considered
ordinal and they can be measured numerically
after operationalizing them.
Strenuous variables: age, gender, cultural
background, ethnic background.
Independent: critical thinking, reading.
We will use a Likert scale to determine the frequency of presence regarding each sub component (or sub skill) dealing with critical thinking.