Promoting EFL Learners’ Critical Thinking on Reading Comprehension

Abstract

Student Teams Achievement Division is a teaching technique which requires the students to work in group. This technique was proposed by Slavin (1995). Through implementing the STAD technique in teaching reading comprehension and promoting critical thinking, the study investigates: (1) the effectiveness of STAD in teaching reading comprehension; (2) the effectiveness of STAD in promoting critical thinking; (3) the interaction between reading comprehension and the critical thinking achievement.

This study employed the quasi posttest-only design which analyse the posttest score of the subjects since the subjects was assumed to be homogeneous. The subjects were the sophomores of a vocational high school majoring in Pharmacy. The students’ achievement were measured by administering two kinds of posttest, reading comprehension and critical thinking.

Based on the statistical inferential by using non-parametric Chi-Square, the findings of the study revealed a statistical difference between the experimental group and the control group’s reading comprehension and critical thinking. The statistical computation pointed out that the χ2observed > χ2table (45.034 > 32.671) for the first problem, while in the second problem the same computation was presented (33.322 > 21.026). The results indicated that this study could not accept the null hypothesis for the first problem, which means that STAD is an effective technique to apply. Hence, STAD can be implemented to promote critical thinking through reading comprehension. However, the third statistical computation showed that the p-value (0.159) is greater than the critical value (0.05). Therefore, there was no relation between the reading comprehension and the critical thinking skill of the students.