Students' Representation of Critical Thinking and the Application of Intellectual Standards: The Case of 3rd year Students in the Department of English at Mouloud Mammeri University of Tizi-Ouzou

Abstract

The present research seeks to learn more about the studentsˈ representation of critical thinking, and at the same time investigates the application of critical thinking intellectual standards in their exam papers. To achieve these objectives, papers of third year students in the field of literature and civilization have been taken as a sample. The research mainly relies on Paul Richard's Framework of intellectual standards of critical thinking. For the sake of empirically investigating the topic, a quantitative approach is adopted. It is used for data collection and data analysis. The study relies on a textual corpus made up of thirty students’ civilization exam papers. Apart from the textual corpusˏ the research also makes use of a questionnaire administered to fifty participants. The data composed of 50 respondents answers are analyzed through Excel software and the qualitative content analysis. The findings of this research reveal that the informants are familiar with the concept of critical thinking and its importance while writing their essays .The results also demonstrate that students do not apply the intellectual standards of critical thinking in a desirable way.