On the Interconnection between Bloom's Critical Thinking Taxonomy & Listening Comprehension Performance of Iranian EFL Learners

On the Interconnection between Bloom's Critical Thinking Taxonomy & Listening Comprehension Performance of Iranian EFL Learners‫‏‬ [PP: 22-31] Khadijeh Aghaei Department of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Humanities & Physical Education Gonbad Kavous University Iran Ebrahim Mirzaei Rad Golestan Science and Research Branch Islamic Azad University Gorgan, Iran ABSTRACT Embedded in Bloom‟s critical thinking taxonomy, the present study is to find the relationship between critical thinking and listening comprehension of Iranian elementary EFL learners focusing the moderating role of gender. Having diminished Oxford Quick Placement test, the researchers randomly selected 40 male and 40 female elementary-level Iranian EFL learners as the main participants in this study. California Critical Thinking Skills Test and the listening comprehension test designed by Danar Wijanarko (2010) based on Bloom‟s Taxonomy was also administered to find the possible significant relationship between critical thinking and listening comprehension of Iranian elementary EFL learners considering gender‟s moderating role. Using two-way ANOVA, Pearson correlation and regression analyses, the researchers found that there was no significant interaction among critical thinking, gender and listening comprehension ability of the learners. However, the findings indicated that there were significant positive relationships between the critical thinking ability and listening comprehension of both male and female participants. The findings point to the importance of critical thinking in language learning and teaching. The results make an implications avenue for policy makers, materials writers, teachers and learners. Keywords: Critical Thinking, Listening Comprehension, Gender, Bloom’s Taxonomy, EFL Learners The paper received on Reviewed on Accepted after revisions on ARTICLE INFO 04/05/2018 28/05/2018 28/08/2018 Suggested citation: Aghaei, K. & Mirzaei Rad, E. (2018). On the Interconnection between Bloom's Critical Thinking Taxonomy & Listening Comprehension Performance of Iranian EFL Learners‫‏‬. International Journal of English Language & Translation Studies. 6(3). 22-31. 1. Introduction Critical thinking (CT) has been identified as one of the most important skills in education, individuals‟ personal and social lives (Guiller, Durndell & Ross, 2008; Hashemi and Ghanizadeh, 2012). It is also used to define how well different skills or competency in these skills is learned or mastered. The reason for the necessity of critical thinking in language education [for example, listening skill] is success in the contemporary world where the rate at which new knowledge is created is rapidly accelerating (Marin and Halpern, 2011).‫‏‬ Furthermore, cultivation of critical thinking as an important goal of English language education (Lun et al., 2010) leads to individual differences in student learning. It also helps individuals to think and analyze critically about their own learning, and to strive and develop expertise in their areas of professionalism (Phan, 2010). A substantial theoretical and empirical base now exists in the literature to demonstrate the association of critical thinking with learners' academic success (Lee & Loughran, 2000). Bloom (1956) in his taxonomy as his contributions to introducing critical thinking categorizes abilities of analysis, evaluation, and recognizing unstated assumptions as elements of critical thinking (Watson & Glaser, 2002). Bers (2005: 16-17) claimed that “ because critical thinking takes place when learners operate in the analysis, synthesis, and evaluation phases, Bloom‟s taxonomy can be considered as an assessment of critical thinking". Many studies have so far investigated different aspects of critical thinking and its relation to skills such as speaking (Soodmand & Rahimi, 2014), reading comprehension (Barjesteh & Vaseghi, 2012; Fahim & Haghighi, 2014), On the Interconnection between Bloom's Critical Thinking… and vocabulary learning (Purfallah & Gholami, 2014). Yet, the relationship between critical thinking as a pedagogical practice among different genders, learners and EFL listening comprehension has not so far obviously been investigated, especially in Iranian language institutes. In other words, although critical thinking has recently drawn attention in the literature on ELT, in which order Iranian EFL female and male learners are placed based on Bloom‟ taxonomy in their performance in language institutes‟ listening comprehension texts is still a niche in research literature. The present study, therefore, filled in this gap on the necessity of including critical thinking in Iran‟s English language institutes for boosting listening skill among different genders to enable them to read, analyze and response the global challenges in education which has recently garnered attention. For this purpose, the current study focused on elementary-level Iranian EFL learners who are at the beginning of language socialization in their society to investigate whether the critical thinking may be equally observed for both genders. 2. Bloomian Taxonomy & Critical Thinking In this study, Bloom‟s Taxonomy of educational objectives (Bloom et al., 1956) is selected as a theoretical framework to define critical thinking and analyze data because it is widely accepted among educators as an outline for socio-cognitive presence in classrooms. It also clearly describes the characteristics of higher order thinking skills, which many educational systems in different countries such as Iran are scaled and evaluated. Specifically, teachers will be using Bloom‟s taxonomy as they explore concepts related to higher-order thinking and the relationship between language and cognition. It serves as a model that assists educators in presenting ideas and concepts at varying levels of thought. It outlines six types of cognitive thinking skills, ordered from the least to the most complex: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation (Bissell & Lemons, 2006). Although the model is hierarchical, subsequent levels of the cognitive skills may include some, but not necessarily all, of the mastery required in the previous level. It is important for developing questions aimed at higher-order thinking. Critical thinking is most likely to take place when educational system goes for the six levels. “If teachers Khadijeh Aghaei & Ebrahim Mirzaei Rad are going to help learners develop problemsolving and reasoning skills, they must use activities and tasks that require higher-order thinking skills. In doing so, they also do a much better job of coaching children in their development and acquisition of academic language” (Himmele, 2009:83). Therefore, to empirically investigate such claims, it would be more practical to explore the efficiency of many educational systems through the higher levels on Bloom‟s Taxonomy (1956). 2.1. Lower-Order Thinking Skills The first three levels of understandi (...truncated)