Teaching and Assessing Critical Thinking in Second Language Writing: An Infusion Approach

Recent calls for promoting students’ critical thinking (CT) abilities leave second language (L2) teachers wondering how to integrate CT into their existing agenda. Framed by CT model, the study explores how CT could be effectively taught in L2 writing as a way to improve students’ CT skills and L2 writing performance. In this study, an infusion approach was developed and implemented in actual classroom teaching. Mixed methods were employed to investigate: (1) the effectiveness of the infusion approach on improving students’ CT and L2 writing scores; (2) the relationship between students’ CT and L2 writing scores; and (3) the effects of the infusion approach on students’ learning of CT and L2 writing. The results of the statistical analyses indicate that the infusion approach has effectively improved students’ CT and L2 writing scores and that there was a significant positive relationship ( =0.893,