The relationship between efl teachers’ critical thinking skills and vocabulary learning strategy instruction across gender

Abstract

The purpose of this study was investigating the relationship between Iranian EFL teachers’ critical thinking skills and teaching vocabulary-learning strategies to their students. Additionally, it explored the difference of the strength of correlation between critical thinking skills and vocabulary learning strategy instruction across gender. California Critical Thinking Test- form B and Yu-Ling’s inventory of teaching vocabulary-learning strategies were administered to 90 Iranian EFL teachers. The results showed that strategy instruction significantly and inversely correlated with analysis (r=-.27), inference (r=-.22), and inductive reasoning (r=-.3) skills, while the correlation was not significant considering evaluation (r=-.11) and deductive reasoning (r=-.089) skills. Moreover, the difference between correlation of vocabulary learning strategy instruction and inference skill was statistically significant when male and female participants were compared (Zobs=2.24).