THE IMPACT OF CONFERENCING ON EFL LEARNERS' CRITICAL THINKING

Since Critical thinking has been an important focus of psychological and educational research during the last decades. Various methods of promoting EFL learner Critical thinking have been attempted, and different theoretical approaches have been proposed. Consequently, the main goal of the present study was to investigate the impact of Conferencing on EFL learner Critical thinking. Therefore, two groups each with 30 elementary learners selected as the experimental and control group. In the experimental group, Conferencing was practiced. The conferences conducted orally and the teacher gave students enough time to speak about their problems provides students appropriate feedback. The participants also were asked to take part in the whole classes and individual conferences after writing each text. The participants of control group received their scored writings without any oral and written feedback by the teacher. Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (CTA) questionnaire was used as the measure of learners' Critical Thinking. The result of the study indicated that there was significant difference between performance of the experimental group and the control group on the post test and learners' Critical Thinking increases as an effect of Conferencing.