CRITICAL THINKING AND WRITING: THE EFFECTS OF CRITICAL THINKING ON WRITING SKILL AMONG IRANIAN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS MAJORING IN TEFL

Critical thinking is fundamental to all language learning skills and to all disciplines and aspects of our lives as well. This study investigates the effects of critical thinking on writing skill of the learners of teaching language as a foreign language, TEFL, students in Tehran Payame Noor University, Iran. Participants of the study consisted of 26 female TEFL students between ages of 24 to 40, who were selected non-randomly. All the subjects, as one group, were pretested before treatment and received a posttest after that in the form of two writings. A 4-point Likert scale questionnaire was given to the subjects before and after the treatment. All the procedure of the study was done via the Internet. Applying t-test to the results of the research revealed that although enhancing critical thinking skills had a statistically significant impact on TEFL subjects’ writings. The implication might be that critical thinking is a process that should be taught from the very beginning levels of education system and integrated with all aspects of instruction in language learning pedagogy.