Infusion of critical thinking skills into high school 10th grade efl classes

In today's world, there are many changes that we struggle to keep pace with. The technological developments brought about by the century in which we are have led to a serious competition among the countries. This competition has resulted in the necessity for people to have some abilities beyond traditional and ordinary skills. Critical thinking skills are at the forefront of them; and nations shape their education systems according to this necessity. Critical thinking should be considered as one of the inevitable goals of education. Because, thinking skills are very necessary for a society characterized by rapid change. For this reason, educating students as effective thinkers in our world of cognitive development ought to be one of the main objectives of education policy. In recent years, Critical Thinking (CT) and Higher Order Thinking (HOT) skills have been mentioned in the curricula prepared by the Ministry of National Education. However, there are not specific activities and exercises enhancing critical thinking abilities in the textbooks prepared by the ministry and in supportive resources. This leads to a tremendous disadvantage particularly for teachers in getting students to comprehend high – level thinking skills. There are a number of studies in our country in terms of eliminating these deficiencies. However, these limited studies do not provide any applicability to cover all the educational institutions in our country. In order to make up for this deficit, research should be carried out on a large scale. Additionally, curriculum and material development studies should be conducted within the Ministry of National Education. The study covered the 2017 - 2018 Academic Year and 131 10th grade students in Emine Nabi Anatolian High School in Çukurova. The study was an exploratory case study, based on infusing critical thinking skills into the 10th grade English curriculum, doing the lessons according to remodeled unit plans during one academic year and evaluation of the results. At the first stage, students were given a questionairre and their critical thinking levels were determined. Activities and tasks were given to the students in line with the remodeled lesson plans and their level of critical thinking was occasionally observed during classes. With a final questionairre given at the end of the academic year, the level of development in students' critical thinking skills was measured. Data obtained from both the final questionairre and the face – to – face interviews have revealed that the English lessons done in the light of the remodeled lesson plans with critical thinking tasks substantially provided students with critical thinking skills. The results and products of this study have significant importance for language teachers, curriculum and material developers within the ministry. This research also includes implications for similar studies to be conducted on the field. Keywords: Critical thinking, teaching critical thinking, higher order thinking skills, high school English curriculum