Critical Thinking and their Listening Comprehension Test Performance

Many studies have been done in the area of critical thinking to show that it has an important function in education. This study aimed at investigating the relationship between Iranian EFL Learners’ critical thinking and their listening comprehension test performance to see xxx if those with higher critical thinking perform differently than those with low critical thinking in referential and inferential listening comprehension tests or not. The participants of the study were 64 EFL advanced learners, with the age range of 17 to 23, studying at Kish Institute of Science and Technology, Rasht, Iran. In this study, to homogenize the learners the Longman Paper and pencil test (2004) was utilized; moreover, xxx in order divide learners into high and low critical thinkers a Critical thinking questionnaire (xxx Honey,xxx2004) with 30 items whose reliability was calculated by Cronbach’s formula was used (α= .86). The design of the study was an ex-post facto one. By using descriptive statistics, researcher xxx researchers/ the researcher obtained the means of each group in two different tests of listening. And the results of Independent T-Test revealed that there are statistically significant differences between high and low critical thinkers' performance in both tests (p<0.01). It means that although in the case of language proficiency all learners are homogeneous, high critical thinkers outperformed low critical thinkers in both inferential and referential listening comprehension tests. The results of the study implied that educators must pay more attention to the role of critical thinking on the learning processes and by instruction of critical strategies help them to be critical thinkers.

Keywords:

referential , inferential , critical thinking , Listening Comprehension