Critical Thinking Ability and EFL Learners' Reading Comprehension: An Essential Factor in Teaching Reading Courses

In EFL contexts, the reading instruction practices do not do much to enhance students’ reading comprehension especially at higher levels. The instructional practices prevailing therein emphasize surface-level information processing techniques such as memorization and rehearsal at the expense of deeper processing such as elaboration and critical thinking. Given the importance of reading comprehension abilities and critical thinking skills, it seems to be imperative to raise EFL instructors’ awareness concerning the possible relationship between critical thinking and EFL reading comprehension performance. This book provides an investigation of students’ critical thinking ability and how they are related to the students’ gender and reading scores. From the perspective of professional practice, this study has the potential to make a significant contribution to the field in that it has provided further insights into the relationship between EFL reading comprehension performance and critical thinking. Moreover, EFL instructors can be made conscious of the importance of critical thinking and they could therefore apply its strategies at the EFL reading courses.