1. Applying thinking skills to EFL classrooms By Mei-Hui Chen Newcastle University

2. Research Questions
What are students’ attitudes and perceptions towards thinking skills used and questioning-answering behaviour in EFL classrooms?
What are students’ attitudes towards the effect of higher-order questioning?

3. Methodology Research Design A case study over intervention
- treatment: Higher-order questioning
- 12-week intervention ( 2 hours per
week)
Data collection methods
Video/Audio recording
Questionnaire
Interview

4. Participants Participants - 40 non-English major Freshmen Teacher
- Non-native speaker of English

5. Reliability of the questionnaire
Table 1: Result of Cronbach’s Alpha
Reliability of the questionnaire l
Cronbach’s alpha = (internal consistency)
EFL thinking skills categories
Cronbach’s Alpha
N of Items
Overall items
.94 45
The importance of thinking skills
.887 18
Use of thinking skills
.951
Attitudes of questioning-answering
.822 9

6. Questionnaire findings.1
Pre- and post-test mean score for each section of the questionnaire
descriptive analysis
Mean (Pre-test)
Mean (Post-test)
Thinking skills used in English class
2.16
2.29
Type of questions students can answer
3.02
2.79
Questioning-answering behavior
2.89
2.80
Class
No. of participants
Mean (pre-test)
Mean (post-test)
SD (pre-test) SD
(post-test)
調整候平均數
Adjusted mean
Visual 40
2.6518
2.5937
2.5929
Maths 32
2.8450
2.5349
Paired –samples T Test
Paired Differences t df
Sig. (2-tailed)
Mean
Std. Deviation
Std. Error Mean
95% Confidence Interval of the Difference
Lower
Upper
.05811
.90593
.14324
.34784
.406 39
.687

7. Questionnaire findings.2
Students’ perception and attitudes towards the intervention conducted
English speaking ability has improved (60%)
Talk more in English (87.5%)
Lengthen the intervention, English speaking ability improves more (65%)
Higher order thinking skills have been developed (72.5%)
Express ideas more logically with reasons or evidence in English (90%)
Lengthen the intervention, both higher-order thinking ability and the speed of thinking improve more (75%)
More confidence in expressing ideas in English (87.5%)
Prefer to discuss in a small group (80%)
Prefer to have more opportunities to practice English speaking (75%)

8. Implication Language learning in higher education
needs to go beyond the learning of the
language itself (Van Duzer and Florez, 1999).

9. Thank You!