PROMOTING EFL JUNIOR SECONDARY STUDENTS’ CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS THROUGH ANALOGICAL REASONING IN NARRATIVE TEXT

Abstract

The current rate of advancement in information and technology presents new challenges for EFL teachers at all levels of education. Students are confronted with perplexing data, leaving them feeling disoriented in the digital world and ignoring their awareness of social issues. This problem prompts the teachers to encourage students’ critical thinking skills through various strategies that require them to participate in learning.  This study describes the implementation of analogical reasoning in a narrative text to promote EFL junior secondary students’ critical thinking skills and investigate the levels of students’ thinking skills promoted by the teachers through the learning strategy. A classroom action research covering two cycles was employed as a research design. There were three instruments to collect the data: classroom observation, interview with the teachers and students, and document analysis. The collected data were then analyzed and interpreted by referring to the theory of analogical reasoning, narrative text, and promoting critical thinking skills. This study revealed that the teachers applied analogical reasoning in three stages, such as retrieval, mapping, and reflecting integrated with students’ schemata. In terms of the students’ levels of thinking, this learning strategy had successfully promoted students’ thinking skills from applying to creating levels as indicated from the inferences made by the students.