CRITICAL THINKINBG ACTIVITIES THAT ARE CURRENTLY PRACTICED IN EFL CLASSES AT METU NCC

Middle East Technical University

Northern Cyprus Campus

EFL 311

Evren Özdemir

Submitted to:  Assist. Prof. Dr. Nurdan Gürbüz

January, 10, 2013

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study is to find out what kind of critical thinking activities that are currently practices at METU NCC. In order to collect the required data for the study, questionnaires and interview were used as main data collection tools in the study. There were 11 participants in the study and while 3 of them took part in questionnaire, 7 of them participated in interviews. In addition, 7 of the participants were women and 4 of them were men. By interviewing and giving questionnaire to the participants, the data was collected and the collected data which are currently used critical thinking activities in EFL classes at METU NCC according to the explanations of the participants was categorized under some categories, but the focus of this study which are critical thinking activities were classified under the categories of Meaningful, Communicative and Mechanical activities; however, there isn’t any activity that fit the category of mechanical activities, so the activities that are currently applied and thought as critical thinking activities by the participants were put under categories of Communicative and Meaningful activities. At the end of the study, it was found that the teacher in EFL classes at METU NCC don’t use critical thinking activities like Project Work, Dialogue Journal, Reading Logs that were given in the part of review of literature because of the fact that the background and lower levels of the students are not suitable to use such critical thinking activities. On the other hand, it was seen that the teachers use more communicative and meaningful activities in EFL classroom. After the detailed analysis of communicative activities like group work, pair work etc and meaningful activities as problem solving task, hypothetical questions, it was found that the activities that the participants use carry the characteristics of critical thinking activities that were given both in introduction and review of literature parts; therefore, it is thought that these activities with their characteristics can be called as critical thinking activities. Moreover, in the study, it was found that while 4 of the participants say that they don’t use critical thinking activities, two of them use activities in the categories of communicative and meaningful activities that carry the characteristics of critical thinking activities.

INTRODUCTION

     Since a long time, how to think efficiently and see the World differently has become an attractive issue for people. This attractiveness has oriented people to think critically. The Socratic principle which is ‘’the unexamined life is not worth living (Elder, 2007)’’has become a starting point for people who think critically. In connection with thinking critically, the term critical thinking  has attracted the attention of many educators in recent years and these educators tried to define what ‘’critical thinking’’ is. With regard to John Dewey[C1] (1933, p. 118), critical thinking is ’’ active, persistent and careful consideration of a belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds which support it and the further conclusions to which it ends’’ and also according to Michael Scriven & Richard Paul (1987), critical thinking is cognitively  structured process of dynamically and effectively perceiving, understanding, visualizing mentally, analyzing, synthesizing and interpreting the information which is gained from ‘’ observation, experience, reflection, reasoning or communication’’ as a way to reach a belief and action. Due to its positive and significant effect on development of thinking ability, the application of the critical thinking in classroom activities attracts the attention of the educators.

      Depending on critical thinking, critical thinking activities that provide the chance of meaningful practice  and using existing knowledge, the students’ involvement in the activities both emotionally and cognitively, the use of the language apprehensively and productively, opportunity of taking feedback for the students. (Gaskaree, Mashhady, Dousti, 2010, pp. 38-39). A critical thinking activity has some procedures. At the beginning, a problem that attracts the attention of the students is determined and discussed and then the reasons of the problem are analyzed and the possible solutions are explored. During these processes, the students have the opportunity of practicing and applying activities (Richards and Schmidt, 2002, p 420-421 as cited in Gaskaree, Mashhady, Dousti, 2010, p. 40). Also, while these processes are applied, open-ended questions about the problem are asked to the students and they study on the problem by negotiating the meaning (Gaskaree, Mashhady, Dousti, 2010). As a result of the problem posing and problem solving process, the students become autonomous learners and realize the potential of their intellectual capacity(Gaskaree, Mashhady, Dousti, 2010). In addition, when language learners use the critical thinking activities by applying these processes in the language learning process, they can have the chance of the integration of their thinking and language skills (Gaskaree, Mashhady, Dousti, 2010).

     By relating ‘’critical thinking’’ and critical thinking activities, the aim of this paper is to examine the critical thinking activities that are currently used in METU NCC. At the end of this study, what kind of critical thinking activities for teaching critical thinking skills and the activities currently practiced in EFL classes in METU NCC will be learned and it is also thought that this research can be an example for subsequent research about the practice of critical thinking activities for teaching Critical Thinking skills in METU NCC.

Research Question

In this study, quantitative data collection method is used and in the analysis of the data, the descriptive way is used. Throughout the study, the following research question will be the focus of the study.

Question:

What are the critical thinking activities that are currently used in EFL classes in METU NCC?

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

     Critical thinking activities have been in use for a long time, but at the beginning of the 20^th century, the number of researches about critical thinking has substantially increased. Some of these activities are examined in this study are Project Work, Dialogue Journal, Reading Logs, Structured Conversational Dialogues, using Portfolio, writing activities (Completing incomplete jokes, Completing an incomplete passage, ‘’Recycling’’ Writing and Printed characters- based  Writing), critical thinking skills with content-based EFL instruction, critical thinking activities (Promoting Interacting Working Groups, Developing Elements of Critical thinking, Improving Elements of language skills) for dealing with unrelated evidence for the claim in EAP context in PCU. The descriptions of these activities are given below in a regular order in the studies and the articles.

     The first critical thinking activity is Project Work. According to Stoller (1997), the project work has the role of providing meaningful interaction with language and content, creating more active atmosphere for learning and collaboration and enhancing learners’ level of thinking skills with the integration with the content-based instruction in English Language classrooms. With regard to Stoller (1997), Project work is cooperative, student centered, encouraging and based on content learning and also it promotes authentic interaction with the skills. Stoller (1997) proposed 10 step sequences of activities for developing a project work in a language classroom. The sequence is to agree on a theme for the project, determine the final outcome, structure the project, prepare students for the language demands of step VII, compile and analyze information, prepare students for the  demands of step IX, present final product, evaluate the project’’(Stoller, 1997). When this sequence is applied in a contend-based language classroom, more attractive and collaborative classroom environment can be created. The other critical thinking activity which provides collaboration as Project work will be explained in the following paragraph.

     The other activity which provides more attractive and collaborative communication for the development of students’ language and literacy skills is Dialogue Journal. With regard to Peyton (2000), it is an interactive writing between a teacher and students as a conversation. It helps the students to have different kinds of communication ways and to develop their language and literacy knowledge. In his study, teachers behave as a ‘’evaluator’’ respond to the student’s questions, comments and presents a new topic, correct students’ mistakes about their journals by writing back to the students as in a face to face conversation. In his study, Peyton(2000) proposed that Dialogue journals provide ‘’Extended contact with learners, Management of classes  with learners of varying language, ability, and interest levels, Assessment of student’s need and progress and Facilitator of Language Learning’’. As dialogue journals, the latter critical thinking activity positively contributes to the students’ communication skills.

     Another critical thinking activity is Reading Log that provides collaborative interaction and contributes to the developments of the students’ communication skills is Reading Log. Carlisle (2000) defines reading log as ’’ the activity of student written reading logs as a practical application of reader-response theory in EFL literature teaching’’. In the reading log, the students write the record of their reactions, questions and ideas about the reading text and when the reading text are collected, the students learn the ideas of the other students and then the teacher gives feedback(Carlisle, 2000). Moreover, reading logs are expressive and collaborative activity which encourages the students to think and use language fluently and helps them to develop their language and writing skills. Also, reading log helps the students to detect and reconstruct their secondary world (Carlisle, 2000). According to Tolkein (1997:132)(as cited in Carlisle, 2000, p. 13) secondary world is a writer’s creation which is opposite to the real world the students interact with four processes which are ‘’Anticipating/retrospecting, picturing, interacting and evaluating’’ (Benton and Fox, 1985:2-18, as cited in Carlisle, 2000, p.12) in their secondary world    At the end of his reading log study, Anthony Carlisle (2000) said that‘’ writing reading logs helped the students to get more out of the book’’. Reading logs are beneficial for the development of the students’ language use and the thinking ability and also when the students need to use both their language and thinking skills together. By using the abilities that are gained from Reading Logs, the students can communicate effectively. In the following critical thinking activity, the use of language and thinking skill is necessary for the students to communicate effectively.

     The use of language and thinking skills are the important to communicate effectively, so there is a critical thinking activity which is Structured Dialogue Journals. Zainuddin and Moore(2003) defined the structured controversial dialogue as ‘’ an adaptation of the constructive controversy’’. They explained that Structured Controversial Dialogues are applied in cooperative learning environment and in the application of the activity, an issue is discussed in small groups by the students (Zainuddin and Moore, 2003). When the students examine one side of the issue, they examine the other side of the same issue. Moreover, Zainuddin and Moore (2003) stated that students construct complex ideas by using simplified language, so the students can easily comprehend and interpret the complex ideas and knowledge. In addition, Structured Controversial Dialogues help learners to be active learners, to understand and evaluate different perspective and to have systematic reasoning and critical thinking skills (Zainuddin&Moore, 2003).In addition to benefits of Structured Controversial Dialogue on the learners, the learners need to increase their understanding, critical thinking skills and systematic  reasoning about the language, so by using Literacy Portfolio, they can develop these characteristics in the language (especially in writing)

     Next critical thinking activity is Literacy Portfolio. According to Yang (2003),’’Portfolios are collections of students’ work selected by the students to represent their learning experiences’’. Portfolios involve students’ collections of samples from their second language use so as to present other students and teachers (Yang, 2003). Over the period of time, students’ portfolios are controlled instead of evaluating at final submission (Yang, 2003).According to Yang (2003) Portfolios have two functions. They show the progress of the students and provide the chance of self-evaluation and so forming their language development in language learning process, but this development especially happen in the writing skills (Yang, 2003, as cited in Gaskaree, Mashhady, Dousti, 2010, p. 42).Yang (2003) conducted a study about Portfolios which is based Learning Strategy-Based instruction. A sequence whose steps are ‘’Diagnosis, Preparation/Awareness, Raising, Instruction, Evaluation’’ were used in the study while using learning strategy-based instruction in a freshman English course. It was found at the at end of the study that portfolio are helpful for students to increase their awareness about learning strategies, ease their learning, process and develop their self-directed learning (Yang, 2003).While Literacy Portfolio help the learners to enhance their awareness on language and their ways of learning about the language (especially in writing), there are some critical thinking activities such as ‘’Completing Incomplete Jokes, Completing an Incomplete Passage, “Recycling” Writing, and Printed-characters-based Writing’’ help the learners to have  team voice( not as individual voice in Literacy Portfolio) and develop their writing skills.

Four critical thinking activities (‘’Completing Incomplete Jokes, Completing an Incomplete Passage, “Recycling” Writing, and Printed-characters-based Writing’’) were examined in a study by Wang C., Wu, Fang, Wang J. (2005). The aim of their study was to explore if teachers who participated agree that the four critical and instructional activities in writing workshop effective in English writing context. At the end of the study, it was seen that the teacher respondents saw that the four critical thinking and instructional activities are effective and the demonstrator was successful in writing workshop (Wang C., Wu, Y., Fang, Y., Wang J., 2005). Also, the teacher participants’ critical thinking and writing skills were seen in teamwork by using their existing knowledge and experiences and then this leads to form a cooperative environment and have a team voice (Wang C., Wu, Y., Fang, Y., Wang J., 2005). Moreover, these activities increase the awareness about encouraging students’ English writing ability through critical thinking activities (Wang C., Wu, Y., Fang, Y., Wang J., 2005). The weakness of the study were not being able to reduce the time of the activities for implementing the instructional goals and not making more than four activities for studying more deeply and academically (Wang C., Wu, Y., Fang, Y., Wang J., 2005).In addition to the benefits of some critical thinking activities for writing skills and language skills, some critical thinking activities  as Concept Mapping contribute to understand and setting connections between different ideas and provide the development of reading skill.

The other critical thinking activity is Concept mapping. According to Khaidadady and Ghanizadeh (201, p, 48)’’ Concept maps are graphical representations of knowledge. By forming connections between among thoughts on a visual map, concept maps help the learners to understand the connections between ideas’’. Khanidadady and Ghanizadeh(2011) conducted a study and in the study, they explored the effect of concept mapping. Concept mapping has a positive and significant influence on the learners’ critical thinking and encouraged them to use their critical thinking abilities. Moreover, these results agree with the idea of Wheeler and Collins (2003) (as cited in Khaidadady and Ghanizadeh, (2011) that concept mapping is effectual in helping nursing students improve critical thinking skills. In addition, by depending on the results, Khaidadady and Ghanizadeh (2011) stated that finding leads to the conclusion that concept mapping encourages EFL students’ use of critical thinking skill in reading classes. Different from the critical thinking activities above, there are also some critical thinking activities which are based on content or a problem.

     Meei-Ling Liaw (2007) investigated the effectiveness of encouraging learners’ critical thinking skills on EFL skills with a content-based approach. She conducted a study to set connection between theories and instructional practices by using design and application of a content-based junior high school EFL syllabus (Liaw, 2007). The results of the content-based instruction for developing critical thinking skills positively contributed to the development of the participants’ English language and thinking skills. On the other hand, there were two limitations in the application of content-based approach in junior high school EFL syllabus. The numbers of participant who participate in the study were not enough and also there were not a control group who can control whether the findings are owing to the instruction (Liaw, 2007).In addition to content-based approach in language learning, there is also activities which are based on a problem.

     In order to deal with problems about the students’ use of unrelated evidence for supporting their claims in PCU (Petro Christian University), Tedjaatmadja(2009) argues that critical thinking and language skills should be encouraged to be used in academic assignment and to deal with the problems in daily life by students. In her article, Tedjaatmadja (2009) designs several critical thinking activities to incorporate critical thinking units in EFL classes. The first activity is ‘’Promoting Interactive Working Groups’’ (Tedjaatmadja, 2009). According to Tedjaatmadja (2009), students’ critical thinking skill and language can be developed through interaction with the other students. In order to achieve this, by working in groups, the students’ reflection on their writing and presentation can be speeded up and so critical thinking can be stimulated (Tedjaatmadja , 2009). Therefore, the students’ development in their works can be enhanced (Tedjaatmadja, 2009).The second activity was ‘’ Developing Elements of Critical reading’’. How we read will identify how we write, so our critical thinking will determine how we write critically (Tedjaatmadja, 2009). Tejaatmadja(2009) designed several steps for this activity and in the steps, handling cognitive a components of critical thinking and improving of the clarity of expressing the critical thinking are the focus of the steps. The third activity is ‘’improving elements of language skills’’. With regard to Hedge (2000) and Stapleton (2002) (as cited in Tedjaatmadja, 2009), a language is the way of transferring the writers’ ideas, so if good argument is not stated clearly, they will be inefficient. Also, Ferris (2002:38) (as cited in Tedjaatmadja, 2009) claims that the teachers are responsible for helping the students to develop their linguistic skills. Depending on these ideas about language, the teacher has a crucial role for what the students can do to success the maximum possible accuracy and clarity in language (Tedjaatmadja, 2009). As a result, in order to incorporate thinking units and to deal with problems about the students’ supporting their claims in EFL classes, the critical thinking activities which are ‘’Promoting Interactive Working Groups, Developing Elements of Critical reading, Improving elements of language skills’’ can be used to help students to handle their problems about their claims by encouraging them to participate in collaborative and interactive group, to express their ideas clearly as much as possible in writing with the help of reading and express themselves verbally  and clearly with the  encouragement   of the teachers in the classroom environment(Tedjaatmadja , 2009).

To sum up, critical thinking activities can be very helpful for EFL student at many aspects. During these activities, the students can find attractive, collaborative and active atmosphere for learning of the language. In this learning environment, EFL students can be more active and self-directed in the application of the activities. As a result of these characteristics, the students can learn the language more meaningfully and communicatively in a collaborative environment and have a team-voice. In addition to this, during these activities, because of the increasing awareness of the learners in the language and the usage of it interactively, the students can develop their reading and writing skills during the application of these activities.

METHODOLOGY

In order to find what kinds of critical thinking activities are applied in EFL classes, qualitative data collection method will be used in this study. Questionnaires and Interviews are used as the main data collection tools to collect data in this study and descriptive way will be used in the analysis of the data.

Data Collection Tools

In the study, questionnaires and interviews are used as main data collection tools. Moreover, in order to collect data in interview, a mobile phone is used as recorder. The questions that were used in the interview are the same with the questions that were used in the questionnaire. The reason why the questions in both questionnaire and interview are the same is that all the questions are suitable for both questionnaire and interview and the questions are clear and they also necessitates the participants to tell what kind of critical thinking activities they use in their classrooms. Because of these reasons, changing the questions wasn’t thought and it was thought that these questions are clear enough to reach the aim of this study. All of the questions are open-ended. The first three questions in the questionnaire and interview are asked to learn what kind of language teaching philosophy, instructional activities and processes into the application of the activities the teachers use. The rest of the questions except the last one were prepared to find out what the participants know about critical thinking activities, whether they use them in their classes, whether there are benefits of using critical thinking activities for the language and thinking skills of the students in case of using critical thinking activities in their classes. The last question which is’’ What kind of activities would you use in your language classroom ‘’ lead to some hesitation on the participant due to the question’s extension an open-endedness; however, many of the participants didn’t hesitate too much for answering the questions and some of them also gave more clear answers than it was expected . In addition to these questions, during the interviews , extra questions were asked to the participants to reach more accurate knowledge about the critical thinking activities , but in the questionnaire, extra questions couldn’t be asked to the participants because questionnaire depends on writing, not verbal communication and also additional questions were attempted to ask, but due to busyness ,workload of the participants and other reasons as overlapping of class hours of the interviewee and interviewer, the additional questions weren’t be able to be asked to the participants. In addition, a paper on which the questions were written was given in the interviews and the same paper was given the participants that attended to questionnaire and on the paper, the name and age of participant and the level of the participants’ students were requested to write on the paper.

Participants, Setting and Procedures

Participants for both questionnaires and interviews were chosen from prep-school instructors at METU NCC. 11 volunteer teachers participated in the study. 8 teachers took part in interviews and 5 teachers are women and 3 of them are men. Moreover, 3 of the participants participated in questionnaire. While 2 of them are women, one of them is men. In addition, the age of the participants range between 23 and 36.Participants who voluntarily attended questionnaire or interview were orally asked to participate to the study. Before deciding on doing questionnaire or interview, the participants were asked to participate in the interview; however, some of the participants couldn’t have attended to the interview because of workload and busyness and then the participants who couldn’t take part in interview were asked whether they could attend the questionnaire, but many of them didn’t accept due to the reasons that were covered above. Questionnaires were delivered to the participant who wanted to take part in the questionnaire by hand and interviews were done with the participants’ offices. Before the interviews were done, a date for meeting was decided and the permission for recoding the interview with mobile phone was gotten by asking the participants orally. The interviews took about 15-25 minutes according to the answers of the participants. Before the questionnaires were delivered to the participants, they were asked to write as much clearly as possible and it was asked whether they need any clarification about the questions that they confused about. In addition, during the interviews, the questions were asked to the participants when they were confused and needed clarifications and also during the interviews, extra questions were asked to the interviewees to clarify the important points and clearly explain or classify the critical thinking activities that they use in the classroom. In addition, in order not to lead to puzzlement about the questions’ intention, more relax atmosphere was tried to form, but at some points, some teachers hesitate to answer some questions and abstained from answering the questions, so this abstention of the participants lead to the analysis of the data more difficult and hard to examine.  Moreover, it was expected to see the useless answers that were used in the questionnaire owing to not be able to allowing enough time of the participants for answering the questions clearly because of the reasons that were stated above. The age and gender of instructors aren’t thought to take into account during the analysis of the data from the questionnaires and interviews. At the end, in the study, the critical thinking activities that are currently used in EFL classes at METU NCC are thought to find out as a result of assessment of questions in the questionnaire and interviews.

This study could have been expanded; however, because of time limit and the participants’ busyness and extensive workload this study was had to be done with questionnaires and interviews instead of doing with only interviews. Because of the limited number of participants, a pilot study couldn’t be used in this study.

DATA ANALYSIS

     In the analysis of the data collected from interviews and questionnaires, there are 13 questions. Those questions are prepared to find out what kind of critical thinking activities are currently used at METU NCC. The total number of the participants is 11. 4 of them are men and 7 of them are women. The results of the questions in Interviews and Questionnaire are examined with the questions in this part by categorizing them into groups. In addition to this, the data that was collected from Interviews and Questionnaires are coded and put into categorization for more detailed analysis and the collected data was listed in the charts.

     The first question is ‘’How would you describe your philosophy of language teaching? ’’.  In this question, three categorizations were done .They are ‘’student-centered’’, ‘’communicative classroom environment’’ and ‘’role of teacher’’. The first categorization is ‘’student-centered’’. While 2 of the participants directly said that their philosophy of language teaching is ‘’student-centered’’, the other participant implied this by explaining their philosophy of language teaching. In addition to this, they didn’t give the same answers.       The second categorization is communicative classroom environment. In this category, none of the participants said the same things. They stated their thoughts about the language learning in Communicative Classroom Environment; however, ‘’effective communicating in language’’, ‘’social interactions’’ and ‘’fun and enjoyable’’ have close meaning and show participants’ tendencies more communicative activities.  The ‘’time’’ in parenthesis (beside the sentences or words) implies how many times the sentences or words were used

Student-centered ((stated) 2 times) (rest of them one time)

Communicative classroom environment

·        Focus on their need and different learning styles(1 time) ·        Building good relationships with my students (1 time) ·        Being flexible(1 time) ·        Meeting the academic need and expectations of the students  (1 time) ·        Students have the control(1 time) ·        Creating self-directed learners (1 time) ·        Understand and discover potential of my students (1 time) ·        Encourage them to discover their potential in language learning (1 time) ·        Making things easier(1 time) ·        Helping acquiring knowledge (1 time) ·        Impose knowledge (1 time)

·        Effective communicating in language (1 time) ·        Social interactions(1 time) ·        Fun and enjoyable(1 time)

o    In addition, the third category is ‘’role of teacher’’. None of the participants except one talked about the role of the teacher as their philosophy of language teaching.  One participant implied the role of the teacher as ‘’facilitator’’.

     The second question is ‘’what kind of instructional activities do you use in the classroom?’’. In this question, three categorizations were done according to the types of the activities. The answers of the participants are suitable to categorize under certain types of classroom activities. The categories are ‘’Communicative activities’’, ‘’ Meaningful activities’’ and ‘’Mechanical Activities’’. The first category is Communicative activities. In this category, 6 of 11 participants said that they use ‘’Group Work’’ as an activity in the class. 5 of the participants said ‘’Pair Work’’ as a classroom activity. The rest of the activities were said one time by different participants.  In the second category which is ‘’Meaningful Activities’’, ‘’including videos’’ and ‘’PowerPoint’’ were stated two times by two different participants.  The other activities were said one time. When we look at the meaningful activities, they are more than Communicative activites; however, they aren’t used by many of the teachers as in the communicative activities. The third category is ‘’Mechanical activities’’. Only one participant mentioned about these activities and gave the ‘’drilling activities’’ as example; however, these activities aren’t always used by the participant. The ‘’time’’ in parenthesis (beside the sentences or words) implies how many times the sentences or words were used.

Communicative activities	Meaningful activities	Mechanical activities
·        Group work  (6 times) ·        Pair work (5 times) ·        Demonstrations (1 time) ·        Dictation activities(1time) ·        Information gap activities(1 time)	·        Including videos(2 times) ·        PowerPoint(2 times) ·        Story telling activities (1 time) ·        Pictures (1 time) ·        Graphic organizers/ mind maps (1 time) ·        Role-playing (1 time) ·        Games ( 1 time)	·        Drilling activities(1 time)

     The third question is ‘’Could you explain how you apply the activities and what kind of processes do you follow in the application of these activities?’’. In this question, the data was separated into processes which are ‘’warm-up’’, ‘’comprehension/input’’ and ‘’production/output’’. Except one participant, all the participants answered this question. The first category is ‘’Warm-up’’, in which while ‘’Give clear instructions’’, and ‘’ (use) Pair work’’ were stated two times by different and the same participants, the others were stated one time by different participants. The activities in Warm-up were put under the process of ‘’Warm-up’’ because these activities show the preparation phase for the lesson. The second category is Comprehension/production. In this category, the activities were expressed one time by different participants. In this category, the activities are more related the flow of the lesson and input-based. In the ‘’production/ output category’’, ‘’matching numbers activity’’ is stated two times and some of the other activities were said one time by the same and different participants. The activities as ‘’Monitor’’, ’’Support number/things’’ and ‘’make them understand’’ were said by one participant. These activities were put under this category because these activities show the conclusion and last phases of the lesson.

 The ‘’time’’ in parenthesis (beside the sentences or words) implies how many times the sentences or words were used.

Warm-up	Comprehension /Input	Production/Output
·        Give clear instructions (2 times) ·        Explain them what to do(1 time) ·        Leave them what to do (1 time) ·        (Use) Pair work (2 times) or group work (1 time) ·        Making them listen carefully(1 time) ·        Ask questions (1 time)Activity leading stage (1 time) ·        Making up context (1 time)	·        Get involved (1 time) ·        Studying individually (1 time) ·        Set up (1 time) ·        Walk around and find out the things(1 time) ·        Integrating the students with the lesson(1 time) ·        Questioning why (1 time)	·        Matching numbers/things (2 times) ·        Monitor(1 time) ·        Support number/things(1 time) ·        Make them understand(1 time) ·        Discovery the rule (1 time) ·        Run(1 time) ·        Feedback(1 time)

     The fourth question is ‘’How can you describe critical thinking skills?’’. In this question, the thinking skills were classified under the categories of ‘’Thinking processes’’ and ‘’Thinking abilities’’ according to the thoughts and definitions of the participants for critical thinking skills. The reason why the skills is classified in this way is that the data under the category of ‘’Thinking processes’’ show the processing of the information and the data under the category of ‘’Thinking abilities’’ shows the skills of the learners to process the information. Furthermore, ‘’Analyzing something deeply’’ was said two times and ‘’Synthesize’’ was stated tree times in the category of ‘’Thinking Processes’’. In addition, the rest of processes were said one time. In addition, in the category of Thinking abilities, ‘’to question things’’ was said three times by the same participants who expressed ‘’Synthesize’’. The rest of thinking abilities were said one time.  In addition, to question things and to challenge you were stated by a participant and reflection and self-discovery were said by a different participant. The ‘’time’’ in parenthesis (beside the sentences or words) implies how many times the sentences or words were used.

Thinking processes

Thinking abilities

·        Analyzing something deeply(2 times) ·        Synthesize(3 times) ·        Doubt(1 time) ·        Evaluation information(1 time) ·        Problem making and reaching goals(1 time) ·        Understand with justifications(1 time)

·        To decide it good or bad(1 time) ·        To question things (3 times) ·        To challenge you(1 time) ·        Thinking about what they are learning(1 time) ·        Questioning themselves(1 time) ·        To prove its correctness to themselves (1 time) ·        Ro decide what to believe and what not to believe (1 time) ·        Reflection(1 time) ·        Self-discovery(1 time) ·        To understand differences (1 time)

   The fifth question is ‘’what are the characteristics of the students with such skills?’’. After the data which was stated by the participants about the characteristics of the students with critical thinking skills, the data was put under two categorizations which are ‘’thinking skills of students’’ and ‘’characteristics of such students’’. In the category of Thinking Skills of students, each of the thinking skills was stated one time. ‘’to analyze’’, ‘’to question’’, and ‘’to opposite’’ were stated by only one participants and ‘’think open-mindedly’’ and ‘’to complain’’ were said by a different participant. In addition, ‘’to discover potential in them and ’’Approaching the task analytically’’ were used one time by a different participant. All of the participants completely gave different answers to the question, but there are some common features among the answers. For example, students with such skills always use their brain and thinking skills and don’t accept everything directly; however, they who have critical thinking skills approach everything critically. In addition, in the category of ‘’Characteristics of such students’’, the characteristics of the students with critical thinking skills were listed. Apart from one characteristic which is ‘’curious’’, all the other participants gave answer to this question differently. This can be because of their perspective about the students who have critical thinking skills. On the other hand, any of the participants didn’t list bad characteristics that belong to such students, but good characteristics. The ‘’time’’ in parenthesis (beside the sentences or words) implies how many times the sentences or words were used.

Thinking Skills of students

Characteristics of such students

·        To analyze(1 time) ·        To question(1time) ·        To  opposite(1 time) ·        Think open-mindedly(1 time) ·        To complain(1 time) ·        To interpret and invent  language structures (1 time) ·        Play with the language(1 time) ·        To compare(1 time) ·        To see from different perspectives (1 time) ·        Questioning what they are learning(1 time) ·        To understand the differences(1 time) ·        To discover potential in them(1 time) ·        Approaching the task analytically(1 time) ·        Having question  mark for every activity (1 time)

·        Tolerate ambiguity(1 time) ·        Free learner(1 time) ·        Curious(2 times) ·        Don’t accept all the answers(1 time) ·        Active(1 time) ·        To repeat what learns in the class (1 time) ·        Quiet-open minded(1 time) ·        Practical(1 time) ·        Intelligence(1 time) ·        Hard-working(1 time) ·        Eager to learn(1 time) ·        Independent(1 time) ·        Outgoing (1 time) ·        Eager to do everything(1 time)

     The sixth question is ‘’Do you think your students have such skills? If not, why?’’ While 4 of the participants gave positive answers to this question, 6 of them gave negative answers to this question. One participant gave unrelated answer to this question. In addition, the problems that the participants stated were under two categories which are ‘’Problems with the students and ‘’Problems because of the outside factors’’. The answers of the participants are not the same; however, they answered the questions by telling the problems because of the students or outside factors. Moreover, these problems show why the participants’ students don’t have critical thinking skills. The problems that the participants said were listed below. ‘’Introvert’’, ’’Silent’’, ‘’Not productive’’ were stated by one participant and ‘’Not trying to think about anything’’ and ‘’Not care’’ were said by a different participant. Moreover, ‘’Starting looking at learning from a different point of view’’ and ‘’Concentrate on his own entering’’ the university exam were said by only one participant and problems because of outside factors were expressed by only one participant. The ‘’time’’ in parenthesis (beside the sentences or words) implies how many times the sentences or words were used.

Problems with the students

Problems because of Outside factors

·        Introvert(1 time) ·        Not productive(1 time) ·        Not knowing the difference or to desire to question(1 time) ·        Not trying to think about anything(1 time) ·        Not care(1 time) ·        Starting looking at learning from a different point of view(1 time) ·        Concentrate on his own entering the university exam(1 time) ·        Not having studying habits or critical thinking skills(1 time) ·        They have never done it before(1 time)

·        Formal education(1 time) ·        Family upbringings(1 time) ·        Turkish education system(1 time) ·        Not asking the students’ view to ask questions(1 time) ·        Wanting them taking and accepting without questioning(1 time)

     The seventh question is ‘’Do you use critical thinking activities?’’. In this question, whether the participants use critical thinking activities were tried to find out. While 7 of the participants gave positive answer to these questions, 4 participants gave negative answer to this question. They gave reasons for their negative answers and the reasons that they gave were listed below and put under two categories which are ‘’Problems because of Program’’ and ‘’Problems with the students’’. These problems show why they don’t use Critical thinking activities in their classrooms. Four participants didn’t talk about the some problems and all of them said different problems for not being able to use critical thinking activities in their classes. The problems that they express were listed below. While ‘’extremely strict’’ and ‘’time is extremely scarce’’ were expressed by a participant. In addition, ‘’Midterm’’ and ‘’only rules’’ were expressed by only a participant and ‘’Speaking slowly’’ and ‘’certain activities’’ were said by a different participants. The ‘’time’’ in parenthesis (beside the sentences or words) implies how many times the sentences or words were used. The ‘’time’’ in parenthesis (beside the sentences or words) implies how many times the sentences or words were used.

Problems because of program	Problems with students
·        Extremely strict(1 time) ·        Time is extremely scarce(1 time) ·        Midterm(1 time) ·        Certain activities (1 time)	·        Only rules(1 time) ·        Beginner level(1 time) ·        Speaking slowly(1 time) ·        Not familiar with this  kind of activities(1 time)

     The eighth question is ‘’If so, what type of critical thinking activities do you use?’’. In this question, the aim was to find what kind of activities are currently used in EFL classes at METU NCC and the participants informed us about what kind of critical activities they use in their classes at this questions. One of the participants who attended to Questionnaire didn’t answer this question. The activities that the participants said were put under the categories of Communicative Activities and Meaningful Activities’’. The reason why the activities were classified in such a way is that the activities in Communicative activities are more related with the use of the language in communication and the activities in meaningful activities are more related the integration and use of the language. Two of the participants stated as a critical thinking activity that they use ‘’Discussion’’ and the other activities were said by different participants; however, some of the activities like ‘’Discussion questions’’ and ‘’Decision makings tasks’’ were stated by only one participant. The ‘’time’’ in parenthesis (beside the sentences or words) implies how many times the sentences or words were used.

Communicative activities

Meaningful Activities

·        Group work activities(1 time) ·        Discussion questions(1 time) ·        Discussion(2 times) ·        Debate(1 time) ·        Argument(1 time) ·        Decision making tasks(1 time) ·        Ask questions personal(1 time) ·        Roles in groups(1 time)

·        Reflective learning(1 time) ·        Homework(1 time) ·        Writing your biography(1 time) ·        Open-ended ended questions(1 time) ·        Reflection activity(1 time) ·        Problem-solving task in decision making(1 time) ·        Hypothetical questions and situations(1 time) ·        Analytical questions(1 time) ·        Keeping journal (1 time) ·        Saying topic before starting reading (1 time)

     The ninth question is ‘’what kind of processes do you follow in the application of these critical thinking activities?’’. In this question, the participants gave different answers except ‘’giving the input first’’ and while some of them said the processes during the activity according to category that is below, some talk about a process or processes during the application of the activity. 3 of the participants didn’t give answer to this question. The processes that the participants apply in the activities were listed like the processes beginning the task, during the task and end of the task processes and the processes in the application of the activities were listed under the categories which are ‘’Warm-up’’, ‘’Input Stage’’, ‘’Practice’’, and ‘’Evaluation and Production’’. In ‘’warm-up section’’, the participants usually use the ways like asking questions, discussing the topic that will encourage the student to attend the activity and in input stage, the participants draw the attention of the students on the topic with the ways like ‘’to produce something’’. In addition, in ‘’practice’’ stage, the participant communicate with the students more and help them to practice by using the ways as writing ‘’small dialogue’’ or ‘’monitoring them’’ and in ‘’evaluation and production’’ stage, the participant make last changes or arrangements like ‘’revision, summarize’’ etc. The ‘’time’’ in parenthesis (beside the sentences or words) implies how many times the sentences or words were used.

Processes

Warm-up	Input stage	Practice	Evaluation and Production
Ask the students about their idea(1 time) Discuss the topic(1 time) Ask questions(1 time) Convince that atopic actually a questionable one(1 time) Feel engaged (1 time) Present activity/problem(1 time)	To include discussion(1 time) To produce something(1 time) Giving the input first(1 time) Give instructions(1 time) Asking concept questions (1 time)	Practice the language together(1 time) Write the dialogue(1 time) Monitor them(1 time) Making practice in groups or pair work(1 time) Debate and discussion(1 time) Have small groups(1 time) Create discussion groups(1 time)	Revision(1 time) Controlling whether the student understand or not(1 time) Making brief review(1 time) Feedback(1 time) Summarize(1 time) Use English to create new structure and play with the language(1 time) Choose a solution or reach conclusion(1 time) Present the conclusion by justifying(1 time) Accept the alternatives(1 time) Rethink the task (1 time)

     Tenth question is ‘’How do you think your students benefit from these activities?’’.In this question, the participants’ thoughts about the benefits of the activities on the students were wanted to learn; however, none of the participants gave the similar answers. On the other hand, the answers that the participants gave were related in some aspect, so they were classified under the some categories which are ‘’Benefits on Thinking’’, ‘’Benefits on Personality’’ and ‘’Benefit on Learning’’. In addition, one of the participants who took part in Questionnaire didn’t answer this question. The ‘’time’’ in parenthesis (beside the sentences or words) implies how many times the sentences or words were used.

Benefits on Thinking	Benefits on Personality	Benefits on learning
·        approach everything by having critical thinking approach(1 time) ·        Think beyond the context(1 time) ·        Becoming more independent and self-critical(1 time) ·        Need to questioning the structures(1 time)	·        To improve personality(1 time) ·        Positive effect on your self- confidence(1 time) ·        Have the principle of self-discovery(1 time)	·        Make learning effective(1 time) ·        Becoming more confident and autonomous learners(1 time) ·        To improve knowledge of a topic(1 time) ·        To create a new structure(1 time) ·        Play with the language(1 time) ·        Being more aware of the usage of the language(1 time) ·        Making learners stronger in case of discussion and argument(1 time)

     Eleventh question is ‘’Does using critical thinking activities help the students make progress in their language learning process?’’ Except one participant, all the participants gave answer to this question. In this question, all the participants gave positive answers. This question was more personal, so the participant didn’t give the same answers  except’’ learn more’’ in the category of    ‘’Progress in learning style’’; however, when we look at their answers, it can be seen that all the participants have some common related thoughts about the progress in language learning as a result of using critical thinking activities. The answer of the participants were classified under two categories which are ‘’Progress in the use of language and learning of the language’’ and ‘’Progress in learning style’’. The ‘’time’’ in parenthesis (beside the sentences or words) implies how many times the sentences or words were used.

Progress in the use of language and learning of the language

Progress in learning style

·        Being better at all of the subject in terms of English(1 time) ·        Language skills improve(1 time) ·        Affect their learning and make learning language long lasting process(1 time) ·        Becoming aware of advantage of English if they are surviving in English speaking community(1 time) ·        Realize the fluency and the ability to express themselves in English(1 time) ·        Improve language learning skills(1 time) ·        Know to produce language themselves(1 time) ·        Invent  new voice and use the language effectively(1 time) ·        Gain skills that are transferable to language learning(1 time) ·        Discover of units, language rules, points, aspects by using these skills(1 time) ·        Seeing the difference of culture and way of approaching the language (1 time)

·        Feel more motivated(1 time) ·        Learn something new(1 time) ·        Learn more(2 times) ·        Make learning effective(1 time)

     Twelfth question is ‘’Do you think critical thinking activities are helpful for thinking skills of EFL students?’’In this question, apart from two participants, the other participants gave positive answers and some of them gave long answer instead of giving short answers. Some of their positive thoughts about the effects of critical thinking activities on EFL students are listed below; however, they didn’t give similar answers. Their answers are more related about the learning method, perspective, speech, characteristic, thinking skills of the students. In addition, 2 of the participants gave negative answers to this question and their reasons for why critical thinking skills aren’t helpful for the thinking skills of the students were listed under the title of Problems. These problems are more related with background knowledge of the students about critical thinking activities.

Benefits on thinking skills	Problems
·        Express themselves in an appropriate and in strong way(1 time) ·        Extrovert(1 time) ·        Making learning process easier(1 time) ·        Trigger certain mental processes(1 time) ·        Evaluate the situation(1 time) ·        Try to come up with the solution(1 time) ·        Broaden their horizon(1 time)	·        Background(1 time) ·        They not used to(1 time) ·        Lower levels(1 time)

The last question is ‘’What kind of activities would you use in your language classroom?’’. 2 of the participants didn’t answer or give proper answer to the question. In this question, it was wanted from the participants to give information about what kind of activities they would use in the class. The activities that participant gave are listed here in the categories of Mechanical Activities, Communicative Activities and Meaningful Activities. Only one participant said that she would use Mechanical Activities. In addition, most of the participants said more communicative and meaningful activities. 3 of the participants said ‘’Discussion’’ activity. While 6 of the participants stated communicative activities which are ‘’Asking their opinions about something’’, ’’Discussion’’, ‘’Problem-solving’’ and ’’Group work’’, 7 of the participants talked  meaningful activities that are Play more games, Using enjoyable and motivational things, Comparison (pictures, case) and Real life situations. The ‘’time’’ in parenthesis (beside the sentences or words) implies how many times the sentences or words were used.

Mechanical activities	Communicative Activities	Meaningful Activities
·        Kinesthetic activity(1 time) ·        Total Physical Response((1 time)	·        Asking their opinions about something(1 time) ·        Discussion(3 times) ·        Problem-solving(1 time) ·        Group work(1 time) ·        Role-play(1 time)	·        Play more games(1 time) ·        Using enjoyable and motivational things(1 time) ·        Comparison (pictures, case) (1 time) ·        Decision making(1 time) ·        Reading(1 time) ·        More fun stuff activities(1 time) ·        Games, songs, karaoke activities(1 time) ·        Real life situations(1 time)

DISCUSSION AND RESULTS

This study intended to find out ‘’what kind of critical thinking activities currently used in EFL classes at METU NCC?’’ In order to provide more reliable data, the questions were examined one by one.Theone. The first question is ’How would you describe your philosophy of language teaching? Most of the participants directly implied or gave explanations that their philosophy of language teaching is student-centered.  According to most of the participants’ language teaching philosophy, the students are the focus of the lesson and the entire environment in the classroom for language teaching are tried to create for learning of the language. With regard to the participants, a teacher in a classroom should ‘’be flexible, focus on their need and different learning styles, meet the academic need and expectations of the students, meet the academic need and expectations of the students, create self-directed learners, understand and discover potential of my students, encourage them to discover their potential in language learning, make things easier, help acquiring knowledge, impose knowledge. In addition to this, according to Meece (2003, pp.111)”., [C2] in student-centered teaching, ‘’students aren’t passive learners anymore; however, they are active participants in learning and co-constructors of knowledge”. In addition, some participants see their philosophy of language learning more communicative in the classroom environment. For example, with regard to them, there should be effective communicating in language and social interactions and the classroom should be fun and enjoyable. According to critical thinking activities in the classroom, the student should be creative and active in language learning and the students must use their existing knowledge and communicative abilities that will help them or reaching maximum participation to the process of learning through the activities (Gaskarea,  Mashhady, Dousti, 2010, pp. 36).

When the question which is ‘’what kind of instructional activities do you use in the classroom?’’ was asked to the participants, it was seen that 7 of them tend to use more communicative activities in the classroom. Most of them who use communicative activities prefer to use group work and pair work in the classroom and some of them prefer ‘’Role-playing, Demonstrations, Dictation activities, Information gap activities ‘’. The reason why the participants choose the communicative activities can be because of the fact that communicative activities are mostly based on the use of language interactively. With regard to Richards, (2006, pp.16), communicative practice means that the practice of language in a real context is the focus and the language that is used during the information transferring in real context is not foreseen(2006, pp.16). In addition, five of the participants chose meaningful activities which are ‘’Including videos, PowerPoint, Storytelling activities, Pictures, Graphic organizers/ mind maps, Games’’. The meaningful activities provide the chance of understand the various structures and usages of the target language beside the usage of it. In addition to this, meaningful activities necessitate the learners to make meaningful choices while implementing the activities as they use the language (Richards, J. C., 2006, pp.16). Moreover, only one participant chose mechanical activities. Although the participant says that s/he doesn’t always want to use mechanical activities like drilling activities. Substitution and repetition drills can be examples for the mechanical activities. The reason for why the mechanical activities aren’t preferred due to the fact that Mechanical practice refers to a controlled practice. In Mechanical activity, the students successfully implement the activity instead of correctly or completely comprehending the language that they use (Richards, J. C., 2006, pp.16).

In the question which is ‘’could you explain how you apply the activities and what kind of processes do you follow in the application of these activities?’’. While some participants who answered this question talked about the some processes of the application of the activities, the others talked about all the processes for the application of the activities. In the warm-up process, the participants expressed that they give velar instructions, explain the learners what to do, leave them what to do, use pair work or group work, make them listen carefully, ask questions and make up context. However, one of the participant said that he has a specific processes in the lesson and he said he firstly performs ‘’activity leading’’. This process was put under the warm-up process because it prepares the students for lesson as warm-up. Warm-up is important for the application of the activities because it help the teachers to create a new atmosphere in the classroom and to decide what kind of activity they will do in the class. The second process is comprehension/input. This process was called like this because in these processes according to the participants, the teacher gives input and this process refers to the understanding of the input. In this process, the participants expressed that they get involved, study individually and walk around and find out the things, integrate the students with the lesson and question why. The participant that was stated above have a different specific process that he calls ‘’setup’’ and this process was put under the processes of Comprehension/input. When we look at the answers of the participants for this processes, it can be said that the participants try to get the students involve in activity, make the students understand and participate the activity. The last process is ‘’Production/Output’’. Except ‘’Matching numbers/things’’ activity, all the participants gave different answers to this question. According to the answer of the participants, they try to integrate what they taught to the students. This process was called as Production/Evaluation because with regard to the answers of the participants, the students were wanted to produce what they learn before and the participant evaluates what the students’ knowledge learn more when they realize that their efforts are judged and evaluated (Candlin and Edelhoff, 1982). [C3] In addition, the participant who has some specific processes call this as process as ‘’Run’’ and ‘’ Feedback’’.

In the fourth question, the participants were wanted to define critical thinking skills according to themselves. Some of participants gave similar answers and said that critical thinking skills are analyzing something deeply, synthesizing, and questioning things. The other participants defined critical skills according to themselves. With regard to their different definition or explanations, critical thinking skills are Doubt, Evaluation information, Problem making and reaching goals, Understand with justifications, to decide it good or bad, to question things, to challenge you, thinking about what they are learning, questioning themselves, to prove its correctness to themselves, to decide what to believe and what not to believe, Reflection, Self-discovery, to understand differences. When we look at these definitions, we see that critical thinking skills change to the teacher to teacher ;however, it can be seen in the definitions, almost each participant see critical thinking skills to make the students active and to be critical at learning something. With regard to Scheffer and Rubenfeld([C4] 2000, 2001), critical thinking skills are ‘’Analyzing, Applying Standards, Discriminating, Information Seeking, Logical Reasoning, Predicting, Transforming Knowledge[C5] ’’. When we compare the answers of the participants and the categorization of Scheffer and Rubenfelf(2000, 2001), it can be seen that all the explanation or definitions by the participants  for the critical thinking skills are related with each other at least at one point. For example, discriminating in the categorization of Scheffer and Rubenfeld(2000, 2001) are be connected to the ‘’Doubt’’ at the description of the participants for the critical thinking skills.

The fifth question is ‘’what are the characteristics of the students with such skills?’’. In these questions, the participants gave different answers except ‘’curious’’ to the question according to themselves. Their answers were put under two categories which are ‘’Thinking skills of students’’ and ‘’Characteristics of such students’’. Descriptions of the participants under the ‘’Thinking skills of students’’ are Don’t accept all the answers, to analyze, to question, to opposite, think open-mindedly, to complain, to interpret and invent language structures, play with the language, to compare, to see from different perspectives, questioning what they are learning, to understand the differences, to discover potential in them, to approach the task analytically, to have question for every activity. In addition, according to the participants, the characteristics of the students Tolerate ambiguity, Free learner, Curious, Active, to repeat what learns in the class, Quiet-open minded, Practice, Intelligence, Hard-working, Eager to learn, Independent, Outgoing. All the descriptions of the participants for the students with critical thinking skills carry similar meanings with the description of Nasville State Community College (2012) for the characteristics of critical thinkers. With regard to them, critical thinkers are ‘’deliberate, think carefully, recognize complexities and work within the, curious, desire to seek the truth, communicate clearly and logically, fair-minded, share intellectual, empathy, demonstrate integrity, develop reasonable conclusions using analysis, evaluation, inference, and deduction’’. Moreover, according to the definition of John Dewey (1933, p. 118) for critical thinking, critical thinking is’’ active, persistent and careful consideration of a belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds which support it and the further conclusions to which it ends’’. When we look at this definition for critical thinking, we can see that the participant thoughts about the students with critical thinking skills carry same meanings.

The sixth question is ‘’Do you think your students have such skills? If not why? ’’ While five of the participants gave positive answers to the question, 6 of them gave negative answers. There are some problems that lead to the participants gave negative answer. According to six of the participants, their students don’t have such skills and they gave some reasons for this. These reasons were put under the categories of Problems with the students and Problems with the outside factors. Problems which originate from the students are being introvert, not productive Not knowing the difference or to desire to question, Not trying to think about anything, Not care, Starting looking at learning from a different point of view, Concentrate on his own entering the university exam, Not having studying habits or critical thinking skills, having have never done it before. As result of these problems of the students, with regard to the participants who gave negative answer, their students don’t have critical thinking skills. Furthermore, there are problems that are based on outside factors. They are Formal education, Family upbringings, Turkish education system, Not asking the students’ view to ask questions, wanting them taking and accepting without questioning. As a consequence of these statements of the participants about because of the student and outside factors, it was seen that more than half of the participants’ students don’t critical thinking skills. Moreover when the problems that originate from students and outside factors are compared, it can be seen that the students are not initiative and willing to learn or become a critical thinker; however, when we look at the outside factor, it can predicted that problems because of the students and problems from outside factors are connected with each other. For example, a correlation between the problems which are ‘’Turkish education system and ‘’Concentrate on his own entering the university exam’’ may be done because the application and the procedure that are applied in  the system may lead to  the students’ concentration on his own entering the university exam; as a consequence, the students just concentrate only the knowledge exam and forget to question what they are learning, so the students can  become a player who plays the role or as the creature at the back of the rabbit in the competition without knowing what s/he is doing.

In seventh question which is ‘’Do you use critical thinking activities?’’, 7 of the participant said that they use critical thinking activities, but four of the participants said that they don’t use critical thinking activities. The participants who said ‘’No’’ or gave different negative answers and said some problems that are connected with each other. The problems that stated by the participants were classified under the categories of problems because of the program and students. The problems which are because of the program are ‘’extremely strict, time is extremely scarce, midterm, certain activities and the problems due to the students are ‘’Only rules, Beginner level, Speaking slowly, Not familiar with this  kind of activities’’. Instead of stating briefly, the participants need to tell these problems to explain their reasons for giving negative answers.

The eighth question is ‘’If so, what type of critical thinking activities do you use?’’. In this question the aim to find out what kind of critical thinking activities are currently applied in METU NCC will be seen. In Interviews, only one activity was said by two participants and the other activities were said one time by different or the same participant (e.g. only one participant says two activities in the list and the others didn’t express the same one). The activities that were said by the participants were listed under the categorizations of ‘’Communicative activities’’ and ‘’Meaningful activities’’.

       In the next  question, the aim was to find what kind of activities are currently used in EFL classes at METU NCC and the participants informed us about what kind of critical activities they use in their classes at this questions. One of the participants who attended to Questionnaire didn’t answer this question. The activities that the participants said were put under the categories of Communicative Activities and Meaningful Activities’’. The reason why the activities were classified in such a way is that the activities in Communicative activities are more related with the use of the language in communication and the activities in meaningful activities are more related the integration and use of the language. Two of the participants stated as a critical thinking activity that they use ‘’Discussion’’ and the other activities were said by different participants; however, some of the activities like ‘’Discussion questions’’ and ‘’Decision makings tasks’’ were stated by only one participant. The communicative activities that the participants said are ‘’Group work activities, Discussion questions, Discussion, Debate, Argument, Decision making tasks, Ask questions personal, Roles in groups and the meaningful activities are Reflective learning, Homework, Writing your biography, Open-ended ended questions, Reflection activity, Problem-solving task in decision making, Hypothetical questions and situations, Analytical questions, Keeping journal and Saying topic before starting reading. The reason for why the activities were listed under such categories can be seen in explanations about mechanical, meaningful and communicative activities. In order to determine whether  the activities that the participants said are critical activities, the results at the end of the review of literature , definitions of John Dewey[C6] (1933)and Michael Scriven & Richard Paul (1987) about critical thinking  and the characteristics of the critical thinking activities in the introduction part were compared. It can be possible for us to whether these activities are applied according to critical thinking activities; however, if we look at the characteristics of these activities, we can make comparison. Firstly, communicative activities(’Group work activities, Discussion questions, Discussion, Debate, Argument, Decision making tasks, Ask questions personal, Roles in groups) necessitate the inclusion of the students in the activities ‘’emotionally and cognitively and the use of the language apprehensively and productively, the opportunity of taking feedback for the students’’(Gaskaree, Mashhady, Dousti, 2010, 38-39). In addition, the lesson passes in an attractive, communicative, collaborative and active atmosphere for learning of the language during the application for these activities. All these characteristics belong to the critical thinking activities with regard to the information above. When we look at these characteristics of these activities and the ways for the application of these activities, we can say that these communicative activities that the participants emphasized are the critical thinking activities. Furthermore, meaningful activities ( Reflective learning, Homework, Writing your biography, Open-ended ended questions, Reflection activity, Problem-solving task in decision making, Hypothetical questions and situations, Analytical questions, Keeping journal and Saying topic before starting reading) require the students’ inclusion in negotiating meaning, the use of intellectual capacity, awareness of the language and problem posing and solving processes, so the language and thinking skills of the students develop. These are also characteristics of critical thinking activities and these characteristics are in almost all of these activities. In addition to this, ’’keeping journal’’ in meaningful activities have same characteristics with dialogue journal With regard to Peyton (2000), Dialogue journal is an interactive writing between a teacher and students as a conversation. Keeping journal is like dialogue journal in many aspects as interaction of teacher and the students, so it can be said that keeping journal can be a factor for creating more attractive and collaborative communication for the development of students’ language. As a consequence, it can be said that apart from two participants who didn’t give proper answers to the questions, all the participants know the critical thinking activities and try to apply them in their classes.

     The ninth question is ‘’what kind of processes do you follow in the application of these critical thinking activities?’’. In this question, the participant said the processes that they follow in the application of the activities that were listed above. Except one participant all the participants answered this question. These activities put under the categories of Warm-up (ask the students about their idea, discuss the topic, ask questions, convince that atopic actually a questionable one, feel engaged, present activity/problem), Input stage(to include discussion, to produce something, giving the input first, give instructions, Asking concept questions, Practice(practice the language together, write the dialogue, monitor them, making practice in groups or pair work, debate and discussion, have small groups, create discussion groups)and Evaluation and Production (revision, controlling whether the student understand, making brief review, feedback, summarize, use English to create new structure and play with the language, choose a solution or reach conclusion, present the conclusion by justifying, accept the alternative, rethink the task). With regard to the processes of critical thinking activities that were written in Introduction part, the activities in Warm-up, Input stage and ‘’practice’’ have the characteristics to attract the attention of the students and the participation and the student to the activities are tried by providing the chance of practicing and applying activities and then At Evaluation and Production stage, the students can find the chance of answering the open-ended questions by negotiating the meaning. When we look at the characteristics of the activities that the teachers said, we can say that these activities that were written above have the characteristics of critical thinking activities.

     Tenth question is ‘’How do you think your students benefit from these activities?’’.In this question, except two participants, the participants expressed their thoughts about the benefits of the activities on the student. The thoughts of the participants about the students  were classified under the some categories which are ‘’Benefits on Thinking’’(approach everything by having critical thinking approach, think beyond the context , becoming more independent and self-critical , need to questioning the structures) ‘’Benefits on Personality’’(to improve personality, positive effect on your self- confidence, have the principle of self-discovery) and ‘’Benefit on Learning’’(make learning effective, becoming more confident and autonomous learners, to improve knowledge of a topic, to create a new structure, play with the language, being more aware of the usage of the language, make learners stronger in case of discussion and argument). When the benefits of the critical thinking activities according to the participants were compared with the processes and characteristics of the critical thinking activities, it can be seen that all the answers that the participants gave show the development of the students to become critical thinker during the application of the activities.

     Eleventh question is ‘’Does using critical thinking activities help the students make progress in their language learning process?’’. In these questions, except one participant the other participants gave answer to these questions and their thoughts about making progress of the students in their language learning process as a result of using critical thinking activities.

    In twentieth question which is ’’Do you think critical thinking activities are helpful for thinking skills of EFL students?’’. In this question, except two participants, the other participants said that critical thinking skills are helpful for thinking skills of the students. With regard to the participants who gave positive answers, the critical thinking activities make  learning process easier and trigger certain mental processes(Evaluate the situation and Try to come up with the solution),Broaden their horizon, Express themselves in an appropriate and in strong way and make the learners extrovert. However, according to the participants who gave negative answers, there are some problems about critical thinking activities about the helpfulness of them on thinking abilities. These are Background, Lower level Problems and not using of the activities before.

The last question is ‘’what kind of activities would you use in your language classroom?’’. 2 of the participants didn’t answer or give proper answer to the question. In this question, it was wanted from the participants to give information about what kind of activities they would use in the class. The activities that participant gave are listed here in the categories of Mechanical Activities, Communicative Activities and Meaningful Activities. Only one participant said that she would use Mechanical Activities. In addition, most of the participants said more communicative and meaningful activities. 3 of the participants said ‘’Discussion’’ activity. While 6 of the participants stated communicative activities which are ‘’Asking their opinions about something’’, ’’Discussion’’, ‘’Problem-solving’’ and ’’Group work’’, 7 of the participants talked  meaningful activities that are Play more games, Using enjoyable and motivational things, Comparison (pictures, case).

To conclude, it was seen at the end of the analysis of the data that many of the participants have different definitions for their language teaching and apply the some similar activities such as group work, pair work and matching numbers/things.   The data analyzed and discussed according to the questions one by one because the answers of the participants in the questions determine the appropriation of the characteristics of critical thinking activities. In addition, during the analysis of the data about critical thinking skills and activities, it was seen that many of the participants have different ideas about critical thinking; however, their ideas about critical thinking meet  on some points such as thinking abilities and thinking processes and in brief, the participants know what critical thinking means. On the other hand, in the analysis of their ideas about whether they use critical thinking activities and their students have critical thinking skills, it was found that 6 of the participants don’t think that their students have critical thinking skills and 4 of them don’t use critical thinking activities. When we look at why the participants think that their students don’t have critical thinking skills, it was seen that there are problems because of students (not productive, introvert) and outside factors (family upbringings and formal education system).In addition to this, 2 of the participants thought that critical thinking activities are not helpful for the development of the thinking skills of EFL students because of their background, lower levels such as beginner, not using them before. However, when we look at the participants who use critical thinking activities, it was found that they know what critical thinking activities are and follow the processes that appropriate for making the learners critical thinkers. It was said before that 4 of the participants don’t use critical thinking activities; on the other hand, it was discovered that except two participants, the other participants use critical thinking activities. The result showed us that 2 of the participants are not aware whether they use critical thinking activities or not. Moreover, it was found that except one similar activity which is keeping journal none of the activities in the literature review are used by the participants. As it was covered above, this can be because of the background, level of the students and whether they use critical thinking activities before or not. However, we discovered that the activities that were used by the participants carry the characteristics like being collaborative, interactive and communicative classroom atmospheres etc. and these activities that the participants use in the classroom encourage the students to think critically as the activities in Review of the literature.

CONCLUSION

Before beginning of the research, it was thought that the teachers in EFL classes would use the activities like Project Work, Dialogue Journal, Reading Logs in the classroom; however, it was seen that teachers can use such activities because as the some of the participants stated that background, lower level of the students are not enough to use these activities and it isn’t known whether the students used these activities before or not. On the other hand, it was seen that the teachers usually use communicative and meaningful activities and these activities carry the same characteristics of critical thinking activities that were described in the part of Review of Literature and encourage the students to think critically.

To conclude, at the end of the research, it was seen that the activities that the participants use carry the similar characteristics with the activities that were covered in Review of Literature. In addition, most of the participants are tend to use communicative activities like group work, pair work etc. and meaningful activities as problem solving task, hypothetical questions. During the application of these activities, according to the statements of the teachers, the students are more willing and enthusiastic to learn during these activities, as a result, they gain critical thinking skills. However, two of the participants tend to use more mechanical activities. It is thought that these activities can prevent the development of the critical thinking skills because these kind of activities are based on memorization and repetition (this can be called rote learning), not learning meaningfully. Furthermore, it was discovered that two of the participants are not aware whether they use critical thinking activities, but they use critical thinking activities without aware of them. At the end, it can be said that critical thinking activities are mostly used in EFL classes at METU NCC.

Additionally, there can be question why the activities that the participants use are called critical thinking activities although they are not completely critical thinking activities. The reason for this is that by depending on the characteristics of the activities in Introduction and Review of Literature part, it was thought that if an activity encourage or help the learners to think critically and then gain critical thinking skills, they can be called critical thinking activities or partially critical thinking activities.

IMPLICATIONS FOR THE FUTURE RESEARCH

The subject of this study is controversial among the educators. The research scope of this study was narrowed to the critical thinking activities that are currently in practice in EFL classes at METU NCC. In this part, the difficulties and limitations in that were confronted during the research will be covered and it is aimed to show a way for the future researchers who do research about the same subject in this study (may about the same topic and research area)

At the beginning of the research, the understanding of the topic is important very much because for the readers, it is necessary to understand what the main idea of the topic that is the focus of the research is. In order to give clear explanations of the subject of the study, the clear explanation that was clearly given in different sources by other researchers can be provided in the introduction part of the research. After the subject of the research is introduced, the scope of the research should be narrowed down. However, this can be challenging issue because a topic that included many sub-categories can be confronted, so the researcher needed to reach the sub-points or categories. After this, the previous field researches that were done should be analyzed according to sub-categories or points.

After the analysis of the previous researches, the aim and way of the research should be determined and data collection ways should be according to the aim. There are important points that should be considered in the data collection process. The researcher should be careful about what knowledge is beneficial for the research, so the interviews or questionnaires or other data collections tools should be arranged with regard to the aim. After the data is collected, the data should be arranged for the specific aim and unnecessary points shouldn’t be used, but the related parts should be taken under consideration.

When the data is analyzed and results are found in a research about critical thinking activities, the activities should be classified according to their characteristics because when the activities which are seen as critical thinking activities as result of analysis of the data are categorized  with regard to the specific characteristics of the critical thinking activities, more accurate results or assumptions about whether the activities that were found in the data carry the characteristics if critical thinking activities can be seen. In order to emphasize again, the aim of this study was to find out what kind of critical thinking activities are currently used in EFL classes at METU NCC. In the collection, analysis and discussion of the data, many things like activities that were stated by the participants were needed to take under consideration because of their connection and in this study, the collection of the data was difficult because of narrow scope of the study. In addition to this, the time for completing the study was limited, so more detailed study couldn’t be provided. In order to not face any problem and carry forward a study, the researchers who will do research about the critical thinking activities should be careful about determining the scope and aim of the study, prepared for collection more detailed data and take account of all the activities that aren’t seem as critical thinking activities despite the fact that those activities carry the characteristics of critical thinking activities. In addition to this, researchers should determine their limit and time to complete the study in order not to exceed the extent of the subject of the study. Moreover, the researchers who will do research about critical thinking activities should know what critical thinking and critical thinking activities are before beginning the study.

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                          Appendix 1- Interview Questions

1.        How would you describe your philosophy of language teaching?
2.        What kind of instructional activities do you use in the classroom?
3.        Could you explain how you apply the activities and what kind of processes do you follow during the application of these activities?
4.        How can you describe critical thinking skills?
5.        What are the characteristics of the students with such skills?
6.        Do you think your students have such skills? If not why?
7.        Do you use critical thinking activities?
8.        If so, what type of critical thinking activities do you use?
9.        What kind of processes do you follow in the application of these critical thinking activities?
10.        How do you think your students benefit from these activities?
11.        Does using critical thinking activities help the students make progress in their language learning process?
12.        Do you think critical thinking activities are helpful for thinking skills of EFL students?
13.        What kind of activities would you use in your language classroom?

Note: The same questions were used in Questiınaire.

Appendix 2 –Questionnaire

Participant’s name:

Participant’s age:

Level of the participant’s student:

EFL311-QUESTIONAİRE QUESTIONS

1.       How would you describe your philosophy of language teaching?

2.          What kind of instructional activities do you use in the classroom?

3.      Could you explain how you apply the activities and what kind of processes do you follow during the application of these activities?

4.      How can you describe critical thinking skills?

5.        What are the characteristics of the students with such skills?

6.      Do you think your students have such skills? If not why?

7.      Do you use critical thinking activities?

8.             If so, what type of critical thinking activities do you use?

9.       What kind of processes do you follow in the application of these critical thinking activities?

10.  How do you think your students benefit from these activities?

11.  Does using critical thinking activities help the students make progress in their language learning process?

12.  Do you think critical thinking activities are helpful for thinking skills of EFL students?

13.  What kind of activities would you use in your language classroom?