The Effect of Critical Thinking on Developing Argumentative Essays by Iranian EFL University Students

Abstract

—This study tried to find out whether or not teaching techniques of critical thinking through writing to the Iranian English students at university level can lead them develop writing argumentative essays. We received the help of 63 university students in two classes at Islamic Azad University, with the average age of 21 whose major were translation. Those falling within two SD above and below the mean on TOEFL were chosen. Participants were asked to write two five-paragraph argumentative essays; one at the beginning of the term, and the other one after 6 sessions. Since the second session, for about four sessions and each session 30 minutes, the experimental group was received a treatment. Participants' papers were scored based on Unrau's scoring guide by two English teachers. T-tests were used to check the differences between experimental and control groups. This study's implication is that techniques of critical thinking can help the students to become critical thinkers because the improvement was positive, yet it cannot help them to write more argumentative essays, for the fact that the improvement was not significant.