VIETNAMESE EFL STUDENTS’ CRITICAL THINKING VIA REFLECTIVE JOURNALS IN EFL LITERATURE CLASSES

Critical thinking has been recently recognised as an important skill in Vietnamese education and in EFL field. However, research on critical thinking practices or critical thinking development in Vietnamese EFL classes is still rare. This study investigated some Vietnamese EFL students’ critical thinking via their reflective journals in American-British Literature classes.30 reflective journals of 15 students were analysed to look for the evidence of the students’ critical thinking. Seven students (out of 15) were then invited for a semi-structured interview to further understand their thoughts in their reflective journals and to get their opinions about the role of reflective journal writing for opportunities to express or develop critical thinking. Anderson and Krathwohl’s (2001) cognitive levels and Barnett’s (1997) criticality domains were combined to form a framework for analysing the data in this study.The study found that the students demonstrated their critical thinking by being able to analyse, evaluate and create not only literary knowledge but also themselves and the world. Reflective journal writing was found to assist the opportunities to develop students’ critical thinking. It is implied from the study’s findings that the critical thinking framework which combines Anderson and Krathwohl’s (2001) cognitive levels and Barnett’s (2015) criticality domains can be used as a reference tool to develop and assess critical thinking or to design teaching contents with the integration of critical thinking. Reflective journal writing activity can be widely used in EFL content classes in general and in EFL Literature classes in particular to promote students’ critical thinking.