Critical analysis of “How might language affect critical thinking performance?”
Introduction
The critical analysis mainly examines the article or others’ work of the researcher to determine how effective the piece is at making a point or argument. It helps to express the opinions of the writer and in the evaluation of the respective text. The analysis is mainly meant to break down and study the necessary parts of the article or other work of the researcher. For a critical analysis, the researcher needs to do two tasks: critical writing and critical reading. The critical analysis helps to point out the necessary decisions to what extent a finding or statement is in the respective research paper—the school pipeline to prison. Ecenbarger (2012) believes that evidence is being taken from various sources that contradict and agree with the argument. As said by Manalo and Sheppard (2016), in this research, the research will do both critical analysis and evaluation of the article, and the name of the article is “How might language affect the critical thinking performance?”
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Critical Analysis
In the chosen article, the author mainly examines language proficiency and the structure of language that could affect the ability for critical thinking among students. The author divided the study into two groups for critical thinking performance. The first is the structural limitation in non-native students’ first language, and the second is language proficiency. The researcher mainly focuses on analyzing two studies. In the case of the first study, the authors had taken about 100 Japanese. The students selected for the first studies were second-year Japanese students, and these students had received guidelines in the case of the academic expatriate for critical evaluation. They did not face any difficulties speaking their native language, Japanese. However, the language has a more indirect structure, making critical evaluation difficult for them. Manalo and Sheppard (2016) said that language proficiency between Japanese and English was found to correlate, which could affect the use of critical evaluation. In the case of Study 2, the same task was provided but among 43 students who were from the first year.
The first-year students did not receive instruction from the author for using critical evaluation statements in the report for the language L2, that is, English. The analysis provided the same pattern in the written word. However, it was being provided at the lower level. As said by Dwyer et al. (2014), the evidence provided by the first-year survey by the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy, average a pharmacy student borrows an average of 0,000. Most students do not provide any correlations between their evaluative statement production and language proficiency scores. The research that the researcher found aimed to find out if the additional guidelines provided to the stud made any difference or not. For this reason, the author has taken one group of students who are being provided with the production of evaluative language. The other group was not provided with any knowledge.
Study 1 mainly focuses on two hypotheses: “evaluative statements were being provided in both English and Japanese that could differ,” and the second hypothesis is “student’s proficiency in a respective language.” The first participants who are being selected are 110 Japanese students from the second year. These students are mainly focusing on the English communication skills development course. It has been found the first group was provided with class textbooks, instruction, examples, explanation, and proper practice in the use of proper languages for critical evaluation. The students were also provided with a single-page textbook translation to understand how to provide valid arguments. The students were given two consecutive 90 minutes classes on Space Shuttle Challenger disaster and the Titanic. The students were asked to write two reports explaining the important causes of each disaster. The author has scored and counted in the written work of students. Kettler (2014) said that language proficiency was measured with the help of students ‘TOEIC-IP scores and the complexity of students’ sentences. It has been produced in Japanese and English. TOEIC (The Test of English for International Communication) provided great help for the author in analyzing the report written by the respective students. The verbs are easy to compare in the Japanese and English languages. As said by Chukwuyenum (2013), the good use of verbs is a good indicator of the structure of the complex sentence. The data has been calculated with means help with their respective standard deviation provided in brackets.
The correlation coefficients between second-year writing complexity and TOEIC scores are also provided in the result. Study 1 shows that about 3.46 mean values students can evaluate in English from a total mean value of 20.31. In the case of the Japanese language, about 3.75 mean values were evaluative from the total mean, which was equal to 18.68. The correlation was equal to the proportions of sentences that had been evaluated and produced by students in the case of Japanese and English, r =0.72 and p<0.0001, R to the power 2 = 0.518. This means students evaluated more critically in a single language demonstrate greater critical evaluation in more foreign languages. Study 2 mainly analyses three hypotheses. For the first hypothesis, the lower use for targeting the language for evaluation of the students from the second year would be obvious. The second hypothesis provides the distinction in evaluative language that is consistent between the language Japanese and English. It was evident that the students from the first year would use the Japanese language more than the English language. For the first language proficiency test, the author Martherthe ked the Japanese language as L1, and for the English language, the author marked it as L2. For Study 2, 43 first-year Japanese students were chosen. The students were given the same homework to write two reports on two related topics provided in Study 1. The report of both groups is being studied and measured with the help of ANOVA. As Pitt et al. (2015) said, ANOVA is a very useful research tool that helped the author with thorough research about the language structure and proficiency of first- and second-year students.
The researcher conducted a correlation analysis to analyze the relationship between the students’ proportion of evaluative language and language proficiency scores. The result has been found that the students are more comfortable providing a report in their native language or Japanese than in English. The author has mentioned that the use of critical thinking helps to improve the non-native speaker when comes to the English language. This will help to lower the perceived deficiencies in the case of people from Asian countries and other international students’ critical thinking. As said by Ghazivakili et al. (2014), the study also helps to indicate proper instruction in the classroom, which is important for developing students’ abilities to demonstrate proper critical thinking competencies.
Critical Evaluation
The research provided by the author was a great success for them. They could compare the language proficiency and structure of the students of both years. The main limitation of this study is that the author had only analyzed the Japanese students and not other international students. Chan (2013) states that the author needs to analyze this research among other non-native speakers to find better results. This is because more people have different languages, different critical thinking, and different cultures. The author requires more time to analyze the research more thoroughly. The researcher must analyze the language structure and proficiency with the help of different written tests and listening tests.
The author must take debate, group discussion, and process all job-related important information. It is a procedure by which duties, nature of jobs, and people to be hired are determined. The information can be used in writing and listening skills among the students to gain more data about how language could affect critical thinking performance. The two languages related explanations made an apparent difference in the critical thinking performance. Students from different cultures mainly manifest it upon arriving in the United States. These students must understand their cultural backgrounds. The author can also take personal interviews with the students. The author can take interviews with the help of two languages. As said by Kong (2014), the overall finding that has been found in English proficiency among the chosen students is mainly the potentially limiting factor. The use of critical thinking skills is needed to be highlighted more thoroughly for the improvement of the proficiency of the English language among non-native speakers.
The strategies need to be implemented to reduce the perceived deficiencies among international students. For this reason, more thorough research is important. The author must need to provide this analysis to other international students to understand their performance in critical thinking and evaluation. As Heijltjes et al. (2015) said, without receiving explicit instruction, most students do not understand how critical evaluation in daily activities or work needs to be demonstrated. The literature review has highlighted the necessary principles and skills related to the critical evaluation of the research paper. However, the main problem that the researcher can face in further studies is taking more different language-speaking natives to implement the research.
The ANOVA test of the analysis of the variance is limited and very complex. Calculating and analyzing the data with the help of the analysis of variance or ANOVA is very time-consuming. Any small mistake in the data can provide a great problem for the author. Two studies are limited in the case of the analysis of Variance. As Dwyer et al. (2015) said, studying more groups will be a great problem for the author. There is also the limitation on the total investment and time constraint of the research. F-test will greatly help for studying the respective research. This is because the author can use the F statistic for comparing two variances, s2, and s1, by dividing them.
Conclusion
From this analysis, it has been found that the author successfully measured the critical evaluation performance among the 1st- and second-year students. The authors’ chosen topic and research study are very important for all non-native speakers. This research study will provide a great amount of improvement for all international students. The universities will be able to learn more new techniques for improving the student’s critical evaluation performance.
Reference
Chan, Z. C. (2013). A systematic review of critical thinking in nursing education. Nurse Education Today, 33(3), 236-240.
Chukwuyenum, A. N. (2013). Impact of critical thinking on performance in mathematics among senior secondary school students in Lagos state. IOSR Journal of Research & Method in Education, 3(5), 18-25.
Dwyer, C. P., Hogan, M. J., & Stewart, I. (2015). The effects of argument mapping-infused critical thinking instruction on reflective judgment performance. Thinking skills and creativity, 16, 11-26.
Dwyer, C.P., Hogan, M.J. & Stewart, I., (2014). An integrated critical thinking framework for the 21st century. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 12, 43-52.
Ghazivakili, Z., Nia, R. N., PANAHI, F., Karimi, M., Gholsorkhi, H., & Ahmadi, Z. (2014). The role of university students’ critical thinking skills and learning styles in their academic performance. Journal of advances in medical education & professionalism, 2(3), 95.
Heijltjes, A., van Gog, T., Leppink, J., & Paas, F. (2015). Unraveling the effects of critical thinking instructions, practice, and self-explanation on students’ reasoning performance. Instructional Science, 43(4), 487-506.
Kettler, T., (2014). Critical thinking skills among elementary school students: Comparing identified gifted and general education student performance. Gifted Child Quarterly, 58(2), 27-136.
Kong, S.C., (2014). Developing information literacy and critical thinking skills through domain knowledge learning in digital classrooms: An experience of practicing flipped classroom strategy. Computers & Education, 78, 160-173.
Manalo, E. & Sheppard, C., (2016). How might language affect critical thinking performance? Thinking Skills and Creativity, 21, 41-49.
Pitt, V., Powis, D., Levett-Jones, T., & Hunter, S. (2015). The influence of critical thinking skills on performance and progression in a pre-registration nursing program. Nurse education today, 35(1), 125-131.
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