The EFL Students’ Critical Reading Skills across Cognitive Styles
[...] Considering the importance of having critical reading skills for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students, the topic of developing of the students’ critical reading always has a prominent place among the researchers and educators. Numerous studies have been conducted to investigate the students’ critical reading ability in English language teaching (ELT) [...].
All of the studies reveal significant roles of critical reading ability on students’ success in academic study and its powerful effect on students’ critical thinking. More specifically, a study by Sultan et al. (2017) reveals that critical literacy approach had a significant effect on the pre-service language teachers’ critical reading skills, which include interpretation, analysis, making an inference, evaluation, explanation, and self-regulation [...].
Moreover, a study conducted by Karabay (2015) finds that, when reading texts, critical readers are always analytical; especially when they take critical notes and underline important information in the texts. Similarly, Kobayashi (2007), far before the study conducted by Karabay (2015), also indicate that critical readers substantially produce critical notes while reading expository texts, comparing to the less-critical readers who relied much on making a summary of the texts.
Critical reading is a skeptical, careful, active, reflective, and analytical activity to judge the value of the text [...]. It is true that when reading texts, critical readers do not only grasp what is explicitly stated in the text but also go far beyond it using their high order thinking skills (HOTs) to tackle and evaluate the content of reading texts.
These skeptical and analytical skills are required because of the emergence of the internet and other media [...]. This suggests that critical reading should become a part of foreign language teaching and learning. The English teachers or instructors should design appropriate teaching activities which encourage the students to develop their critical skills in reading [...]. The critical reading skills are important for the students because it affects their critical thinking abilities which are required nowadays, and in turn, helping them to be critical citizens and critical readers.
A study by Zin & Eng (2014) indicates that critical reading ability can foster the students’ critical thinking habits. This is because reading is thinking and one cannot read without thinking [...]. Nevertheless, it is still difficult for the students to acquire the critical reading ability and big efforts and time are necessary to train the students to be critical. It is because the freshmen are sometimes not ready for the college academic tasks which require their critical thinking. Research carried out by Lisa (2008) confirms that many of the freshmen at the university level are not prepared for the demands of college reading, however, their critical reading skills are developed throughout the semester [...].
Available in: https://jurnalfaktarbiyah.iainkediri.ac.id/index.php/jeels/article/view/72. Acess on: Jan. 30, 2026.
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