TEACHING CRITICAL THINKING: THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL BACKGROUNDS (UKRAINIAN AND FOREIGN EXPERIENCE)

Abstract

The subject of the paper is the theoretical and practical backgrounds for teaching critical thinking in institutions of higher education. The purpose of the study is to systematize and analyze the theoretical and practical backgrounds for teaching critical thinking, taking into account the Ukrainian and foreign experience of scientists. This paper is organized as follows: the first part – clarification of the essence of critical thinking, the second one – foreign experience and the third section is domestic experience with a focus on non-linguistic university students’ critical thinking formation in Foreign Language classes. The topicality of the article is caused by the necessity to analyze and synthesize the scientific achievements of two groups of scientists (domestic and foreign) in this field to outline certain strategies that can contribute to institutions of higher education students’ development of critical thinking in general and non-linguistic university students’ in particular, namely: making time for metacognitive reflection, teaching reasoning skills, asking open-ended questions, teaching information literacy, providing diverse perspectives, practicing makes perfect. It has been stated that it is possible to develop students’ critical thinking while studying any discipline in general and any type of speech activity (reading, writing, speaking, listening), including. Both foreign and domestic scientists emphasize the complex nature of critical thinking as a whole and its separate components in particular as thinking critically means freely using high-level mental strategies and operations (analysis, assessment, creativity) to formulate well-founded conclusions and make decisions. Future work will concentrate on outlining the possible options for building lessons with the development of critical thinking, the case study being English-language textbooks, which are provided by the academic programs of the discipline “Foreign language for specific purposes” at Kherson State Agrarian and Economic University.