USING VISUAL THINKING STRATEGIES FOR DEVELOPING STUDENTS’ CRITICAL THINKING IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE CLASSES

Abstract

Critical thinking is rightly referred to as a skill of the 21^st century. Significant attention is given to the development of this skill in English language classes at the higher education level. However, the scientific literature predominantly highlights the theoretical aspects of developing students’ critical thinking, and there is a lack of scholarly works that describe technologies, methods, and contain descriptions of best practices or analyses of personal experiences. Consequently, higher education faculty members are in need of methodological advice and practical examples to enrich their pedagogical toolkit. In light of this, the aim of the article is to illuminate the methodological aspects and practical recommendations of using various exercises in English language classes at the higher education level to enhance students’ critical thinking skills. The research methods include a review and systematization of the scientific literature on the specified problem, analysis and synthesis of the obtained results, definitional analysis of key terms in the study, descriptive methodological analysis of exercises for developing critical thinking, as well as a forecasting method. The article reflects the essence of visual thinking as an effective tool for developing critical thinking skills. Using the example of teaching English in higher education, it describes some techniques of visual thinking and the methodology for their application, specifically the “Visible Thinking Routines” (VTR) or visual-thinking strategies, developed by researchers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and the methodology for their application. It is emphasized that these strategies are a set of questions or a short sequence of steps that structure and support students’ thinking, making it “visible” to the instructors. The results yielded by the use of visual thinking routine strategies for developing students’ critical thinking in the process of learning English are highlighted. In addition, the prospects for further research are outlined, which the authors see in the experimental verification of the effectiveness of applying visual thinking strategies according to various criteria.