A case study on enhancing critical reading and creative writing skills of the gifted EFL learners through critical thinking practices

The development of critical thinking skills is one of the most frequently stated learning outcomes in the education of gifted children. Developing one's thinking skills will help facilitate and regulate learning and thus make them become independent learners. Equipping learners with a set of thinking skills will also improve their language use skills- particularly their writing and reading skills since these skills help them organize their thoughts, do better planning and preparation for writing and facilitate the comprehension and interpretation of the reading material. Therefore, having the conviction that infusing critical thinking (CT) into teaching a foreign language to gifted students would boost their creative writing and critical reading skills, the researcher proposed an instructional intervention enriched through critical thinking practices to teach seventh-grade gifted students in a BILSEM setting. The purpose of this study was to examine the impacts of this 14-week intervention on the gifted students' critical thinking ability, creative writing, and critical reading skills in English as a foreign language. The instructional intervention employing an infusion approach to critical thinking was designed based on the constructivist learning theory. The principles drawn from this learning theory were considered in developing lesson plans. There was a focus on CT-oriented L2 reading and writing tasks that involved teaching CT and language use. Constructivist instructional techniques such as higher-order thinking skills, brainstorming, concept mapping, graphic organizers, questioning, learning strategy use, collaborative learning, inquiry, and problem-solving techniques were utilised in the 14-week intervention. The study integrated a mixed-methods research methodology and collected quantitative and qualitative data. Quantitative data were gathered from the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level X, the critical reading test, and creative writing samples, which the participants completed as pre and post-tests. Qualitative data were obtained through teacher interviews, the researcher's observational field notes, and focus group interviews with the participant students. The study results revealed the applicability and favourable effects of teaching critical thinking to gifted learners on critical thinking, critical reading, and creative writing skills. The findings showed that the intervention helped gifted students improve their thinking. Moreover, the practices of critical thinking in the teaching of English to these students created a stimulating learning environment for them and, at the same time, allowed for opportunities for purposeful and meaningful language use. The students benefitted from the opportunities to practise critical thinking in their writing and readings, which in turn contributed to their creative writing and critical reading skills. Moreover, the students developed a positive attitude towards integrating critical thinking practices into their language learning experiences. The gifted students perceived the intervention to be fun, novel, and useful. The overall results demonstrated that the infusion approach to teaching critical thinking and a foreign language course enriched through critical thinking practices and based on the principles of the constructivist learning theory had favourable effects on students' thinking and language learning.