International Journal of Evaluation and Research in Education (IJERE) Vol. 12, No. 3, September 2023, pp. 1735~1744 ISSN: 2252-8822, DOI: 10.11591/ijere.v12i3.24699  1735 Journal homepage: http://ijere.iaescore.com Teaching critical thinking to Chinese students in English as a foreign language writing class: A review Zeng Xiaomeng 1 , Latha Ravindran 2 , Mansour Amini 3 1 Department of Education, Faculty of Social Sciences and Liberal Arts, UCSI University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 2 Faculty of Education, Languages, Psychology & Music, SEGi University, Selangor, Malaysia 3 School of Languages, Literacies and Translation, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia Article Info ABSTRACT Article history: Received Jun 13, 2022 Revised Mar 4, 2023 Accepted Apr 3, 2023 Critical thinking (CT) is important for English as a foreign language (EFL) writing. However, the EFL writings of Chinese students are usually negatively commented on in terms of CT in writing. The study reviewed relevant studies on how CT in writing was taught to Chinese EFL learners at the tertiary education level. It shows most EFL writing teachers adopted existing western CT definitions in a general knowledge background and mainly used teacher-centered assessment techniques to teach CT. Students’ CT development was mostly assessed by self-designed CT assessments. Facing the globalization of CT teaching, the study thus updates the assessment techniques to meet the increasing needs of CT teaching in EFL writing in China. Relevant suggestions are also given to education practitioners. Keywords: Chinese universities Critical thinking English as a foreign language Higher education Teaching This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA license. Corresponding Author: Latha Ravindran Faculty of Education, Languages, Psychology & Music, SEGi University Jalan Teknologi, PJU 5 Kota Damansara, 47810 Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia Email: latharavindran@segi.edu.my 1. INTRODUCTION As one of the 21st century skills, critical thinking (CT) is receiving far more attention than ever. Currently, CT is thus integrated into almost all disciplines in higher education [1], [2]. Among various CT teaching methods and approaches, writing is commonly used to teach CT in higher education as writing is viewed as the end product of CT in other disciplines [3] as it is the linguistic organization of thinking [4]. In practical teaching, students seem to do poorly in writing critically, especially non-English speakers from Asian countries. Shaheen [5] reported that Asian students were not critical thinkers in writing based on the interview with 16 British teachers from two United Kingdom universities. Similar findings were also reported in other studies [6], [7]. For quite a long time, the poor performance of CT was explained by different sociocultural contexts. Critical thinking, the hallmark of western or Euro-American thinking [8] or the western-born product [9], developed in western countries where individualism is valued. This is different from Asian countries, especially Singapore, Korea, and China. Influenced greatly by Confucianism, these Asian countries have been labeled as Confucian heritage culture (CHC) [10], [11]. In CHC countries, collectivism is often the core. For a long time, studies discuss the role of different cultures on CT learning [12]–[14] and produced mixed results. Nowadays, as CT teaching is becoming global, it is more important to find how CT is understood, taught, and assessed in different disciplines in different sociocultural contexts to provide reference to CT teaching in different contexts as there is global mobility of students [15]. Chinese English as a foreign language (EFL) students, from the origin country of Confucianism, have always been reported to lack CT in writing. In study by Wu [16], 14 mainland Chinese postgraduates