Effects of Critical Thinking Awareness on Iranian EFL Learner’s Reading Comprehension and its Relationship with Personality Traits A Review of Research Articles (2001-2014)

Despite all efforts and costs of foreign language teaching, students suffer fromdifficulties in language learning skills. The problem appears to be in educationalsystem that teachers, traditionally, do their best to teach ‘what to think’ ratherthan ‘how to think’ (Shuffersman,1991) effectively about the subject matters ascritical thinking. The issue of using critical thinking skills in education has raisedmany contradictory ideas about whether critical thinking can be taught or not.The study aims at providing a comprehensive, detailed review of twenty researcharticles from 2001 to 2013 on the effects of Critical Thinking awareness on EFLlearners’ Reading Comprehension and its relationship with the Personality Traits.The overall result of this review has revealed that teaching critical thinking skillsin EFL context can improve language learning.

Keywords:

Critical thinking , Reading Comprehension , Personality Traits