ISSN 1798-4769 Journal of Language Teaching and Research, Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 608-617, July 2012 © 2012 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland. doi:10.4304/jltr.3.4.608-617 © 2012 ACADEMY PUBLISHER An Investigation of the Impact of Teaching Critical Thinking on the Iranian EFL Learners’ Speaking Skill Ali Malmir (Corresponding Author) Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran Email: a.malmir@yahoo.com Samad Shoorcheh Islamic Azad University, Maragheh Branch, Maragheh, Iran Email: samad.shoorcheh@gmail.com Abstract —This study has attempted to determine the effect of critical thinking on Iranian EFL learners’ speaking ability. There were two equal-sized groups of 20 learners: a control group and an experimental one. The subjects were advanced EFL learners at Shokouh Language Institute in Hamedan, Iran. There were 10 male and 10 female learners in each group. In both groups, similar topics were proposed for group discussion such as air pollution, global warming, friendship, drug addiction, happiness, etc. In the experimental group, in addition to having discussion on the given issues, the teacher devoted some time for teaching critical thinking techniques during the class time. In the very first session, the teacher explicitly elaborated on what critical thinking processes are. Then, during the following sessions the teacher taught critical thinking techniques for about 20 minutes and gave learners time to practice these skills. The findings of the current study revealed that those students who received instruction on critical thinking strategies did better on the oral interview post-test. In addition, it was observed that within the experimental group there was not any significant difference between the performances of male vs. female Iranian EFL learners’ speaking ability after giving the treatment. Index Terms—critical thinking, English as a Foreign Language (EFL), speaking skill, problem-solving tasks I. INTRODUCTION Critical thinking is a very hotly debated topic these days. All educators are now aware of the importance of equipping learners’ with critical thinking techniques, and teachers are making efforts to teach these techniques in the most appropriate way. Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action (Sezer, 2008). Children are not born with critical thinking skills. So how can we make critical thinkers out of children to succeed in their whole life? To start with, education could be the first step for promoting critical thinking among the children. Fisher and Scriven (1997) state critical thinking skills are required to be taught since students' thinking skills are not enough to face the problems students deal with either in education or in daily life. Therefore, educators are required to focus on teaching critical thinking to inform them how to learn instead of just transmitting information that is what to say. Emphasizing on making critical thinking as a part of educational courses, scholars have suggested that critical thinking can be taught in different classroom areas, such as those suggested by Shafersman(1991) including lectures, laboratories, writing activities, term papers, exam questions, home work, and quantitative exercises. At each educational level, thinking must be practiced in each content field. This means hard work for the teacher. It's much easier to teach students to memorize facts and then assess them with multiple-choice tests. In a course that emphasizes thinking, objectives must include application and analysis, divergent thinking, and opportunities to organize ideas and support value judgments. When more teachers recognize that the facts they teach today will be replaced by the discoveries of tomorrow, the content-versus-process controversy may be resolved (Schmitt, 2002). Nosich (2001) holds that most scholars believe that skills needed to begin to think about issues and problems do not suddenly appear in our students. Teachers who have attempted to incorporate higher level questioning in their discussions or have administered test items demanding some thought rather than just recall from their students are usually dismayed at the preliminary results. Unless the students have been prepared for the change in expectations, both the students and the teacher are likely to experience frustration. Thus, we can conclude that critical thinking is quite complicated, and it is difficult for a child to develop such a complex ability without receiving aids from outside. Therefore, we understand that the task of teachers as people who play the pivotal role of training critical thinkers is very crucial, particularly in a language classroom in which students