The effect of using critical reading strategies on developing university students' critical thinking skills

الملخص EN

This study aimed at identifying the degree of undergraduate students' practicing critical thinking skills through using the strategies of critical reading.

These strategies include the students' ability to identify, summarize, analyze, hypothesize, and evaluate any text.

It also aimed at recognizing the effect of being motivated to read on the degree of applying critical thinking skills.

To achieve these two goals a questionnaire of 56 items was developed.

The validity of this instrument has been ascertained through submitting it to a qualified jury; and its reliability has been established by conducting a test-re-test.

The coefficient of reliability was 0.81 and 0.89 respectively.

Wigfield and Guthrie's (1995) Motivation for Reading Questionnaire (MRQ) was also used to measure the effect of students' motivation for reading on developing their critical thinking skills.

The population of the study consisted of all 414 students specialized in English Language Classroom Teacher major at Al-al-Bayt University during the second semester of 2005-2006.

The target sample of the study was restricted to the senior students.

The results indicated that there were statistically significant differences at α= 0.05 due to using critical reading strategies of identifying, analyzing, hypothesizing and evaluating in favor of the experimental group except for summary which was in favor of the control group.

The findings also showed that there were statistically significant differences at α= 0.05 only in the domains of analysis and evaluation due to the reading motivational variable in favor of the motivated readers.

However, by using MANCOVA, it was revealed that there were no significant differences at α= 0.05 due to the interaction between the strategies of teaching reading and reading motivation variables.

It is recommended that teaching should focus on practicing critical reading strategies that have effect on developing the students' critical thinking skills.

Similar studies should be conducted to measure the effect of the other critical reading strategies on developing students' skills of critical thinking.

(Keywords: Critical reading strategies, Critical thinking skills, Reading motivation).