2017 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
The Development of Critical Thinking Skills and English Education
| Project/Area Number |
26370638
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| Research Institution | Waseda University |
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Principal Investigator |
Sheppard Chris 早稲田大学, 理工学術院, 准教授 (60350386)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
Manalo Emmanuel 京都大学, 教育学研究科, 教授 (30580386)
木下 直子 早稲田大学, 日本語教育研究センター, 准教授 (40364715)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2014-04-01 – 2018-03-31
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| Keywords | Critical Thinking / ESL / TBLT / Task Complexity / Trade-off Effect / Japanese Education / Language Production |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
This project examined the development of critical thinking skills through English language education in the Japanese tertiary context and found the following. 1) Critical thinking is independent of the language used, but is related to the available processing capacity in the working memory. 2) The conceptualization processes (i.e. Levelt, 1993) are independent of the language used to express critical evaluation. 3) Simpler tasks resulted in more persuasive writing, and second language production was less persuasive than that of the first language.
4) A style shift often occurred in the boundary between descriptive and evaluative statements when the task was difficult or complex, but not when it was simple.
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