Reading Strategy Instruction (RSI) is an essential requirement for developing reading and critical thinking skills of second language learners in their reading classroom. Therefore, using an effective and appropriate RSI can enable the learners to enhance their critical thinking skills. While many of the studies on applying reading strategy instruction focused on student motivation, struggling readers, improving their reading comprehension skills and vocabulary, none of the studies were focused on the enhancement of the critical thinking skills using the RSI in the second language reading class. The purpose of this present study is to suggest the RSI and to find out if applying RSI enhance the critical thinking skills of the students. This study included sixteen grade 11 participants of Binus school, Simprug. The participants underwent two stages. During the first stage, the participants read the given text and generated questions without applying RSI. Then, applying the
RSI, the participants prioritized three questions, answered those three questions and wrote reflections. The modified reading strategy instruction of Rothstein & Santana (2014) “The Question Formulation Technique” and Alder’s (2001) one of the
comprehension strategies “answering questions” were used for the study. The collected data (a) questions, (b) answers (c) reflections were analysed using modified critical thinking indicators of Mason (1991) and Henri (1992). The results showed that applying RSI in the reading class was beneficial in promoting the participants’ critical thinking skills. The study suggests second language learners to apply the RSI in their reading classrooms to enhance their critical thinking. |