A comparative study of critical thinking strategies in reading in Mongolia and Turkey

A large number of the world's population is reported to read and it is safe to say that the majority of people are able to read in their first language at some basic levels. In the globalized world, productive and educated citizens will require stronger literacy abilities, including reading and writing. Most of the societies and countries around the world are multilingual, and people are facing an increased need for speaking well in more than one language. Within this larger context, reading in the second language (L2) settings continues to take on increasing importance. English is not only considered as a global language for communication but also it is a language for science, technology, literature and advanced academic research. Benefits of learning a second language give us a greater global understanding of the world such as knowing many fascinating cultures around the world, and academic achievement. Besides that, nowadays, the purpose for most college and university tends to prepare critical thinker and critical readers in the first language (L1) and L2. So, the importance of critical thinking skills has been set as a primary goal in higher education in the world. As an important part of learning process, especially in reading, critical thinking enables students to analyze, evaluate and draw a conclusion. Therefore, this study is devoted to the understanding of reading comprehension and critical thinking skills in reading. The purpose of this study is to analyze current literature based on critical thinking, reading comprehension, critical reading and to investigate the level of Turkish and Mongolian English pre-service teachers' critical thinking skills, the level of reading comprehension and their use of reading strategies. Second, to investigate the relationship between critical thinking skills and reading strategies and to what extent critical thinking skills affect the level of reading comprehension and to what extent reading strategies affect the successful reading comprehension. The research was carried out as a correlational research among 3rd and 4th grade English pre-service teachers in two universities, one in Turkey and the other one in Mongolia. In order to conduct the research, we administered Background Information Questionnaire, Survey of Reading Strategy, Reading Comprehension Test, and Cornell Critical Thinking Tests among the participants. In the analysis of the data, the Pearson product- moment correlation was used to find out the realtionship between critical thinking and reading comprehension. Besides, Pearson Correltion, a t-test was also employed to explore the differences between male and female students' critical thinking skills. Thus, a t-test was used to explore the differences between Turkish and Mongolian students. As a result, first, Turkish and Mongolian English pre-service teachers showed high and medium uses of reading strategies in reading. They used Problem Solving Strategies more frequently than Global and Support Strategies. Second, overall use of the reading strategies was not significantly related to their reading comprehension. Third, the findings reveal that there was not a significant relationship between Turkish and Mongolian English pre-service teachers' critical thinking skills and reading comprehension. The importance of critical thinking in education cannot be ignored. Many studies were conducted to determine the effect and relationship of critical thinking with different areas of language. Key words: Critical thinking, reading comprehension, reading strategy, global, problem solving, and support reading strategies, creative thinking, critical reading.