The Development of Critical Thinking Skills and English Education

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26370638
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Foreign language education
• Research Institution: Waseda University
• Principal Investigator: Sheppard Chris 早稲田大学, 理工学術院, 准教授 (60350386)
• 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)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: English Education / Critical Thinking / Task Difficulty / TBLT / 外国語教育 / 批判的思考

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Educators need to understand how to develop critical thinking skills. To do so, they need to understand what constraints there might be on their development. This paper describes research which attempts to determine if it is first language structure, or second language proficiency, or both which constrains critical expression. The written output of three groups of L2 learners (Chinese L1 learners of L2 Japanese, Japanese L1 learners of L2 English, and Korean L1 learners of L2 Japanese) was analyzed for written complexity and critical expression. The results demonstrated that L1 had little influence on critical expression in the L2, but L2 proficiency did.

Free Research Field

外国語教育