The Correlation Between Indonesian EFL Learners’ Critical Thinking Skill and Reading Comprehension Ability

Abstract

Due to the proliferation of information from all sources, such as social media and the recent "fake news" epidemic, the ability to think critically plays a crucial role in the modern era. More than ever before, young people must be able to distinguish between facts and opinions and evaluate the credibility of evidence. Critical thinking consists of the cognitive abilities of reasoning, inference, decision making, and evaluation. To evaluate arguments and overcome problems, humans use critical thinking. To comprehend and manage one's natural and social environments, critical thinking is required. To fathom event causes, scientists must be capable of critical thought. To implement effective policies, politicians must be able to think with precision. As a result, we cannot delegate reasoning to scientists and legislators because we all want to verify the veracity of what they tell us and prescribe for us. We require the capacity for critical thought. The preponderance of information available today pertains to literacy. To assimilate and organize the obtained information in this situation, reading comprehension skills are necessary. In this instance, reading comprehension and critical thinking are related because comprehending the obtained information requires critical thinking. Reading comprehension-related subjects incorporate critical reasoning for this reason. In recent decades, critical thinking has received a great deal of attention, despite the fact that the significance of the present study may be contested. Multiple initiatives to cultivate critical thinking were initiated. It is considered an essential element of education, without which little can be achieved. However, when it comes to teaching the four skills in general and reading in particular, it is typically overlooked by educators and instructors in many nations, including Indonesia. This study aims to determine whether or not critical thinking skills and reading comprehension are correlated. As is common knowledge, critical thinking consists of four components: induction, deduction, credibility, and assumption identification. The researcher wants to determine which of these four factors contributes most to reading comprehension. In addition, the researcher intends to establish a connection between critical thinking abilities and literal and inferential reading comprehension. This study involved 125 first-year English Language Education Department correspondents in descriptive correlation research. Correspondents were provided with online versions of Cornell's Critical Thinking Test (CCTT) type X and Reading Comprehension Test (RCT) in order to obtain the essential data. The collected data were then analyzed using a regression test. According to the data analysis, critical thinking contributes considerably to both literal and inferential reading comprehension. The correlation between the CCTT score and the RCT score demonstrates this. Then, deduction has the greatest distribution of the four mentioned indicators, both globally and at both reading comprehension levels. Critical thinking and reading comprehension are inextricably intertwined and cannot be separated, as critical thinking benefits humans in multiple domains, including reading comprehension. Even though it is less stimulated at the literal level and more involved at the inferential level, the ability to conclude general things into more specific and logical things, or deduction, contributes the most to reading comprehension abilities. The findings of this study have implications for improving the reading comprehension abilities of Indonesian EFL students of varying proficiency levels.