Critical Thinking Skills Among Third Year Indonesian English Students

Abstract

Critical thinking is not a subject that needs to be taught separately, but is a skill that can easily be included in any educational activity. As a skill it may be more important than the subject matter being taught because it is a skill that never goes out of date. English education, like any other form of education, should equip students with thinking skills that will enable them to evaluate and analyze constantly changing issues. As Indonesia prepares a cadre of English—speaking students whose role will be to interface with the influx of English information before it is translated into Indonesian, these students need analytical and critical thinking skills to evaluate what is important and what is not. The question this research attempted to analyze is as follows: are critical thinking skills presently part of the tool chest of third year Indonesian English language students. By using the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z, students were analyzed in a series of subscales in order to provide data for improving educational instruction. Research showed that critical thinking skills among third year university English students in Indonesia lag far behind American secondary and university students.