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LITERATURE REVIEW: CRITICAL THINKING
Raykhon Irzakulova
Academic lyceum named after M.S.Vosikova under
Tashkent state university of law
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14172539
Annotation
This literature review describes descriptive research which explored the
importance of critical reading in education, how it influences an individual’s life
and what kind of strategies, and pedagogies it has. Analysis of the studies shows
that critical reading through gaining critical thinking plays an important role in
improving students’ general comprehension of the task, critical thinking,
decision-making, and problem-solving skills. There are some general
agreements among scholars and researchers about the features of critical
reading whereas, dispositions can be seen.
Keyworsd:
Critical thinking, principals, techniques, interpretation
Introduction
Critical reading has been long studied sphere in the language field.
According to Pressley (2002), there are many types of research on critical
reading and thinking skills. Critical reading enhances students’ problem-solving
skills by experiencing difficult contexts required by life situations and reading
critically helps students easily switch their skills. Additionally, critical reading
encourages effective and interactive reading skills as Anderson (2003) stated. As
we read mainly for meaning, constructing the correct and target meaning is very
crucial to identify in critical reading strategy. According to Crystal (2007),
reading is a process including activeness and fluency to get the constructive
meaning conveyed by the context.
Critical reading is not just reading for pleasure or getting information, it is more
likely to have deeper meaning and notion. However, whatever we read we check
whether the information is reliable or not. This proves that reading is analyzing
and evaluating the thing that we read. Regarding understanding, the
argumentative point in the text is important to identify the evaluation for
critique as we can’t evaluate the things we don’t comprehend.
The critical reader is expected to find out the author’s strengths and weaknesses
along with the controversial points and proofs that the writer outlined.
As Kurland (2000) mentioned that “Critical readers thus recognize not only
what
a text says, but also
how
that text portrays the subject matter” (p.1). Many
experts contend, however critical reading enhances the understanding of the
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logic that they intake and that this evidence is not conclusive. Unfortunately, this
is very rare in reading materials and textbooks. Thus, students can’t
comprehend the words that have been utilized precisely or not, understandable
or vaguely. This may lead to a lack of understanding logically.
This paper seeks to address previous research on the same topic and
analyze the relevance and arguments among them.
Literature Review
There have been many discussions on critical reading strategies over the
years among many scholars. Critical reading strategies are a way where students
analyze the information that the author meant such as facts, opinions, inferences
or author’s aim, and text bias. According to Sustri Harida, E. (2017) in her article
on “Critical reading strategies” outlines that identifying the author’s purpose is a
core of the reading procedure. Writers may write for distinctive purposes such
as to inform, amuse, persuade, or entertain. In her seminal article on “Critical
reading strategies” (p. 14.) Sustri Harida explained all strategies step by step
providing a contextual example. Ranging from making inferences to
distinguishing between fact and opinion is discussed in the article.
Likely, a recent review of the literature on this topic found that critical
reading deals with less specific strategies while general stance and position at
micro level response utilizing critical, conceptual, and affective utterances.
(Mahshad Tasnimip, 2017, p.3). Mahshad categorized reading strategies in the
same way as Sustri Harida did. In her article, making inferences, identifying the
writer’s point, and differentiating facts and opinions are clearly described as
well. Mashhad’s assumptions seem to be well-grounded providing reasonable
examples for each case.
Notwithstanding the fact that Zannatul Ferdous & Mahmuda Alam’s work
divided reading strategies into the following parts: previewing, annotating,
summarizing, analyzing, re-reading, and responding. In the article, the authors
highlighted the importance of critical thinking in critical reading skills. Reading
critically highly depends on critical thinking. Kurland (2000) stated that
evaluation of the ideas mentioned in the text requires critical thinking first. The
process occurs like schemata while judging the ideas. Although there are many
distinctive points about critical reading between “Exploring the meaning of the
critical reading” by Zannatul Ferdous and Mahmuda Alam and “critical reading
strategies” by Harida, there is a general agreement on “facts” and
“interpretation”. Moreover, the principles and purpose of critical reading gather
many researchers around the topic. Catherine Wallace (2003) noted that the
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main emphasis in critical reading is not on individual response but on social
response. (p.42).
Another noticeable term in critical reading brings many scholars to the
same position and decision self-regulated learning skill. Al-shaye, S., (2021) in
her article “Digital storytelling for improving critical reading skills, critical
thinking skills, and self-regulated learning skills” are explained how self-
regulation helps students to improve their reading and thinking skills. According
to the author, self-regulation is part of learning procedure which results from
cognitive control of the students in their success. It implies aimed activities that
enable students to engage in practices than passive participation. In addition, it
gives a way to achieve learning objectives as a successful learner. As Linda
Jeffries and Beatrice S. Mikuulecky claimed that self-regulation shows the
motivational and meta-cognitive process as a successful educational
achievement. Similar research also addressed self-control, management, and
meta-cognition as a core of the study. (Martin & McLellan, 2007). However, lack
of the research studies causes to have no clear definitions of metacognition and
self-regulated learning. According to Brookfield (1986,), self-regulation helps
students to look from different perspectives which is more critical and
comprehensible. Similar research “Critical reading, critical thinking: delicate
scaffolding in English for Academic Purposes” by Kate Wilson outlines some
similar notions as Al-shaye’s. In her article, Kate Wilson approached the
criticality perspective via critical reading. It is encouraged to improve learners’
critical thinking capacity. Thus, self-regulation and self-reflection play a crucial
role in criticality as students are expected to become dependent seekers of
meaning. (Barnet, 2015). But he described that self-regulation is not just way a
of understanding something, it is the way of acting. These researchers have
proposed that criticality in reading pedagogy is the attempt of constructive
theorists. They claimed that rather than a passive reading procedure,
constructive pedagogy enhances the teaching of reading skills.
Nevertheless, there have been many types of research that proposed to
identify the main role of critical reading through different approaches, but there
are still some questionable and controversial concepts among scholars. In the
research paper namely “Critical reading, its key concepts and importance in
foreign language education” by Hakan Demiroz, he raised some questions about
the pedagogical aspect of the topic. “who is the audience for the critical
reading?” is the core of his study. According to the author, being a low-level
language user is not a disadvantage but it may arise a problem when they read
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some complicated reading pieces which are designed for native speakers.
However, L2 learners have an advantage in some situations as they have
metalanguage in which they acquire language by categorizing.
On the other hand, another article by Tobias, R., Schroeder, S., &
Wohrmann, B. (2009) “ You don’t have to believe everything you read:
Background knowledge permits fast and efficient validation of information “
focuses on a totally different aspect of the critical reading which doesn’t have
similarities with previous studies mentioned in this literature review. The core
of the article is validation. Primary ideas of the acceptance of the information
refer to Gilbert (1991). Validation can be understood as various persuasive
effects and other concepts like rejecting incorrect information as (Chen &
Blanchard-Fields, 2000) mentioned. However, the findings in the core
assumption of Gilbert’s study (1991) released as a special case, linked strong
relevance between comprehension and validation which is very essential in the
critical reading process to get the target meaning.
Areas for agreement.
Despite some differences among scholars’ research mentioned above, there
exist areas for general agreement. For instance, studies on critical reading ability
approve the special skills, which include
Recognizing assumptions, implications (Mahshad Tasmini ,2017).
Determining the purpose (Linda Jeffries and Beatrice S. Mikuulecky cited
as in Sustri Harida, E. 2017).
Strategies of the critical reading (Zannatul Ferdous and Mahmuda
Alam ,2022).
Self-regulated reading (Al-shaye ,2021).
Self-control (Martin & McLellan, 2007).
Enhancing critical thinking Lea & Street, 2006).
Areas for disagreement.
However, the majority of the studies share similar thoughts and information on
critical reading, there are still a small number of researchers who have argued
about the principles of critical reading.
It has been becoming a hot controversial discussion through the years.
According to
Individual response (Catherine Wallace ,2003),
Critical and non-critical readers (Kurland, 2000).
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Considering every single aspect of the current topic, we can conclude that
majority of the research papers approve that critical thinking happens within
critical reading process which enables students to identify the logical message in
the text, find out the author’s purpose, and enhance their decision making,
problem-solving skills.
This study shows new attempts to comprehend teachers' critical reading
implementations in ESL classrooms. Particularly, critical reading enhances
higher-thinking order, and reading instruction and improves students’ academic
performance. There are some pedagogical implications that can be found in this
current research analysis paper.
First and foremost, English teachers may use critical reading to motivate
their students to get higher-thinking order and to get a deep understanding of
the text.
Additionally, ESL teachers should consider possible problems which may
arise in decision-making during critical reading strategies. Awareness of
alternative ways or modification of the approaches gives teachers access to a
thought-provoking learning atmosphere.
Although there have been many researches on critical reading and its
aspects, there are some points need to be studied more in further researches.
References:
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Crystal, D. (2007). How Language Works: How Babies Babble, Words
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