A Study Investigating the Relationship between L2 Writing andCritical Thinking Skills
Keigo Niji1, Fumiaki Nishihara2, Kyoko Oi3

1

Graduate School of Education, Chiba University, 2The Japan Institute for Educational Measurement,
3

Seisen University(keigo.niji.0925@gmail.com)

Abstract
This research was conducted with a hypothesis that teaching L2 English writing will promote the critical thinking
ability of Japanese senior high school students. Eighty-two 2nd-year senior high school students participated inthis study. Three sets of evaluation instruments were administered to the participants as a pre-test and a post-test.
One was a logical/critical thinking skills test (provided by the Japan Institute of Lifelong Learning), another was aquestionnaire on students’ attitude toward writing in view of critical thinking and the third was students’ written
products. Three writing lessons were given to senior high school students as the intervention. The students learned
the organization of an English paragraph / English essay, hierarchical structure of ideas in a paragraph/essay, andsome writing strategies. As a result, the scores of the critical thinking skills exams and students’ self-evaluation
scores on the questionnaire increased after the lessons. In addition, the students wrote with better paragraphstructures in the post-test writing on the topic that was the same as the pre-test. We concluded that the writing
lessons helped the students to form some elementary critical thinking skills in their L2 and that they became better
writers of English composition.

Keywords
L2 English writing, critical thinking skills

1

Introduction

This paper investigates the possible relationship between writing and critical thinking skills, which include
finding logical fallacies and understanding the structure of a paragraph written by others. Some researchers
claim that writing activities such as writing argumentative essays involve thinking critically and logically(e.g. Wade, 1995; Bean, 2001 among others). In Japan, how to foster students’ thinking ability is of vital
concern in education. The current Course of Study (the Curriculum Guidelines issued by the Japanese
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in 2008-2009) for Japanese schools
emphasizes that students’ thinking abilities, judgment and expressive abilities must be fostered across all
subjects including foreign languages (i.e. English)1.
This research was conducted with a hypothesis that teaching L2 English writing will promote some
aspects of the critical thinking abilities of Japanese senior high school students.
1.1 Review of Literature
1.1.1 Critical Thinking Skills
Critical thinking skills have been valued and named as one of the most important skills in the 21st century(e.g. Kusumi, 2011, 2015; and among others). Klefstad (2015) explains that “these skills [the 21st century
skills] capitalize on children’s natural way of thinking and include creativity, critical thinking, problem
solving, decision-making, and learning” (p. 147). This shows that it is important for every child to acquire
critical thinking skills. Ennis (1991), who is one of the pioneers in this line of research, states, “[I]n the past
decade explicit official interest in critical thinking instruction has increased manifold” (p. 5). Accordingly,
1

The Central Council for Education of Japan (Chūō Kyōiku Shingikai) submitted a report on the new Course of Studyto the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in December 2016. The report (Central Council
for Education, 2016) also emphasizes the importance of fostering students’ thinking ability.

12many scholars define “critical thinking skills” in their own ways. For example, de Zafra (1957, p. 453)
defines it as follows:
It [critical thinking] is the recognition of cause and effect; it is creative; it is problem solving; it is thequestioning of the traditional and its modification for improvement. Critical thinking can improve theanalysis of a problem into its component parts, and it can involve the arrival at generalizations andtheories from an understanding of the interrelationships among minutiae. Critical thinking is themaking of choices.
Suzuki (2006, p.4) also defines critical thinking skills as the ability to think skeptically, and to think in a
logical and cautious way from several points of view.
In addition, Cottrell (2005, p.4) exhibits a variety of critical thinking skills. Among them, we find thefollowing properties important and relevant to our research:
•
•
•
•
•

being able to read between the lines, seeing behind surfaces, and identifying false or unfair
assumptions;recognizing techniques used to make certain positions more appealing than others, such as false
logic and persuasive devices;reflecting on issues in a structured way, bringing logic and insight to bear;drawing conclusions about whether arguments are valid and justifiable, based on good evidence
and sensible assumptions;presenting a point of view in a structured, clear, well-reasoned way that convinces others.

As we have presented in this section there are a variety of definitions of critical thinking skills, theseproperties given Cottrell (2005) form the foundation of our research.
1.1.2 Critical Thinking Skills in Writing
As much as we know that critical thinking skills are the important skills for all children to acquire, it is notnatural to have the faculty of critical thinking by birth. Blue (2010, pp. 19-20) found that “we human beings
are not naturally capable of thinking logically; the capacity for mental skills would not function without
careful nurturing”. Goodwin (2014) also states that “critical thinking doesn’t come easily for anyone”(p. 78).
Therefore, we need to investigate a way to foster this ability.
There are some researchers who maintain that writing is the best way to gain an understanding of criticalthinking skills, and writing activities such as writing argumentative essays, in particular, involve thinking
critically and logically. Oi (2006, p. 103) implies from her research that there is a close relationship between“writing” and “thinking”. Bean (2001, pp. 19-20) believes that the writing process itself provides one of thebest ways to help students learn the active, dialogic thinking skills valued in academic life. Shrum and Glisan(1994), emphasizing the power of writing, advocate as follows (cited in Scott, 1996, p. 155):
Language is a tool for building and shaping thoughts rather than simply a means for conveying them.
The writing process can help push students to the next developmental level. When students must
organize and express their thoughts in the target language, they are developing critical-thinking skills
such as analyzing, synthesizing and decision-making.
Wade (1995, p. 24) also concludes that “writing is an essential ingredient in critical-thinking instruction.
Writing tends to promote greater self-reflection and the taking of broader perspectives than does oral
expression”.
Therefore, we have formed a hypothesis that there is a connection between writing activities anddeveloping critical thinking skills. Although there are some literature that found the effectiveness of writing
activities in English as a first language (Hillocks, 2010; Quitadamo and Kurtz, 2007; Klefstad, 2015), there
are very few studies that actually investigate the relationship between fostering critical thinking skills andwriting in English as a foreign language. Therefore, it is of interest to conduct research on this aspect;
namely whether critical thinking skills could possibly be developed through engaging in writing activities inEnglish classes in EFL (English as a foreign language) contexts.
1.2 Research Questions
In the present study, we will examine whether or not Japanese high school students could acquire criticalthinking skills and at the same time their written products would improve on the basis of the following threeresearch questions:131) Do the critical thinking skills of Japanese high school students improve after they take some English
writing instruction?
2) Does the self-evaluation of Japanese high school students regarding critical thinking skills change
after they take some English writing instructions?
3) Do the English essays of Japanese high school students improve after they receive some English
writing instructions?

2 Method
2.1 Participants
Eighty-two 2nd-year public senior high school students (11th grade students) in Chiba, Japan participated inthis study. Though they started studying English five years before, most of them had very limited experiencein studying formal English writing before they took part in this research. The participants’ level of English isconsidered to be a B1 in CEFR, which is relatively higher than the ordinary Japanese high school students
2.2 Procedures
Three types of data were collected from students before and after writing lessons as a pre-test and a post-test.
One was the result of a critical thinking skills exam (a provisional version of the exam provided by the Japan
Institute of Lifelong Learning [JILL]), another was the responses to a questionnaire on students’beliefs/attitudes toward argumentative essay writing from the perspective of critical thinking, which was
adapted from Stella Cottrell (2005)’s self-evaluation sheet on critical thinking, and the third was students’
written products.
Regarding the first set of the test, we made two versions of the critical thinking skills exam based on theexam provided by JILL and other literature. We made these tests in such a way as the constructs of the two
versions of the tests were the same. They were developed so that we could assess the critical thinking
abilities of high school students in L2, i.e. in English. The exams include questions that ask the test takers toanswer why a particular utterance is illogical in the flow of a conversation, or ones that ask test takers tochoose irrelevant sentences in paragraphs (see Appendix A). We randomly assigned students to two groups.
In order to obtain a counter-balance, two exams were distributed equally to the two groups in both the preand post-tests.
As for the second set of the data, for a questionnaire on students’ beliefs/attitudes toward argumentative
essay writing from the perspective of critical thinking, we picked questions from Cottrell (2005)’s
self-evaluation sheet on critical thinking. We chose the ones relevant to argumentative essay writing, whichamounted to 20 questions.
Regarding the third data, the students were asked to write on the following topic: “Some people say thatyou should have one best friend rather than many friends. Are you for or against this idea?” They wrote theirideas on this topic in class for 20 minutes without using dictionaries.
To sum up, as Table 1 shows, the critical thinking skills exam corresponds to Research Question 1, andthe questionnaire asking the students’ self-evaluation on their attitudes/ beliefs on writing argumentative
essays corresponds to Research Question 2. The same questions were used in the pre-test and the post-test, sothat we could compare the scores to see if there were any changes in students’ self-evaluation on theirattitudes/beliefs on argumentative essay writing. The final set of the data were the students’ writing products
taken at both pre-test and the post-test to testify Research Question 3.
Table 1: Design of the tests and research questions
1)
2)

3)

Test material
Criticalthinkingskills exam
Questionnaire on
students’ beliefs
Written products

Relevant research question
RQ1: Do the critical thinking skills of Japanese high school students
improve after they take some English writing instruction?
RQ2: Does the self-evaluation of Japanese high school students
regarding critical thinking skills change after they take some English
writing instruction?
RQ3: Do the English essays of Japanese high school students improveafter they receive some English writing instruction?

2.3 Writing lessons as an intervention
Three writing lessons which focused on the logical structure of English paragraphs were given to the14students as the intervention (Table 2). The lesson contents are shown in Table 2. Namely, in the first lesson
the students learned about the organization of an English paragraph/essay, and in the second lesson theylearned about hierarchical structure of ideas in a paragraph or an essay and some writing strategies including
idea generation, and in the last lesson they experienced peer review. Throughout the lesson, the students used
the materials and worksheets that we had developed.
Table 2: Writing lessons given to the students
Lesson 1
Lesson 2
Lesson 3

Contents
Structure of a paragraph/essay, how to classify,
cohesion
Hierarchical structure of ideas, how to generate ideas
Peer feedback rewriting

As we emphasized the structure of paragraphs/essays, hierarchical structure of ideas, and paragraphcohesion in the lessons, we focused on these items in our analysis of the students’ written products. That is tosay, we considered that a good paragraph should manifest good paragraph structure with ideas arranged
hierarchically in a good format and should entail proper discourse markers. These properties will become key
points in our analysis of the students’ written products.
3. Results and Discussion
In this section, we report the results of the pre-test and the post-test, and discuss the changes in students’critical thinking.
As for critical thinking skills exam and writing products, 20 out of 82 participants did not take part ineither the pre-test or the post-test, and we excluded the data from these participants. Consequently, we
obtained the data from 62 students who participated in both the pre-test and post-test, and analyzed them.
Also, 19 out of 82 participants did not answer the questionnaire either in the pre-test or the post-test.
Therefore, we analyzed the data from 63 students who responded to both questionnaires.
3.1 Critical thinking skills exam
The test scores of the critical thinking skills exam are shown in Figure 1. We considered the number of thecorrect answers in the critical thinking skills exam by a participant as his or her test score, and the full scoreof critical thinking skills exams was 19. The mean score (with standard deviation in parentheses) was 13.71(3.12) for the pre-test and 14.74 (3.21) for the post-test. The mean increase of the score from the pre-test to
the post-test was 1.03, and its standard deviation was 3.83. A paired samples t-test confirmed that there was astatistically significant difference between the pre and post-test, t(62) = 2.123, p = .0378, Cohen’s d = 0.270,
95% CI [0.06, 2.00].
It must be noted that there might not be a substantial difference even if there was a statistically significant
difference. Although we lack definite information on the characteristics of the exam score, the increase ofscore in this study seems to be small. However, it is noteworthy that the students’ score improved eventhough they received instructions on writing alone. Namely, there is a possibility that students enhanced theircritical thinking skills without explicit instruction in critical thinking. At least, our result is consistent withthe possibility that the writing lesson affected students’ critical thinking skills.
20

Post−test

15

10

5

0
0

5

10

Pre−test

15

15

20

Figure 1: Result of the critical thinking skills exam. Each point corresponds to one participant. The points
above the diagonal line show the increase of test score after the writing lessons.
3.2 Questionnaire on students’ attitude toward writing from the perspective of critical thinking
Of the 39 questions in the questionnaire, we analyzed 20 questions that focus on students’ attitudes toward
writing from the perspective of critical thinking. Students responded to these questions on a 6-point Likert
scale (6 = Strongly agree to 1 = Strongly disagree).
Though students’ answers to the questionnaire remained almost unchanged after the writing lessons, there
were some questions in which the scores increased from the pre-test to the post-test. (For more details, see
Appendix B.) We ran paired samples Wilcoxon signed rank tests, and found the differences between the preand post-tests were insignificant for almost all questions, with the exceptions for Question 22 (‘Did you
recognize the structure and write based on it?’) Question 34 (‘Did you decide what and how you were goingto write before writing?’). The former’s median of the post-test (Medpost = 3) was significantly lower thanthat of the pre-test (Medpre = 4), V = 470, p = 0.002, adjusted p (using Bonferroni method) = 0.048. The
latter’s median of the post-test (Medpost = 3) was also significantly lower than that of the pre-test (Medpre = 4),
V = 745.5, p = 0.001, adjusted p (using Bonferroni method) = 0.014.
We can recognize from the results of the questionnaire that students’ attitudes toward writing in view ofcritical thinking have remained almost constant in spite of the writing lessons we had provided. It should be
noted, however, that due to limited data, the question of how writing lessons affect students’ attitudes is still
unsettled.
3.3 Students’ written products
We analyzed students’ written products and found that the number of essays that embody a good structure
increased in the post-test compared with the pre-test. We defined “an essay that has a good structure” as theone that should manifest good paragraph structure with ideas arranged hierarchically in a good format andshould entail proper discourse markers. As shown in Table 2, many students improved their paragraphstructure. The percentage of essays that had exhibited good paragraph structure was 29% for the pre-test and
92% for the post-test.
Table 2: Change in paragraph structure of students’ essay

Pre-test

Good
Not good
Total

Good
18
39
57

Post-test
Not good
0
5
5

Total
18
44
62

A McNemar’s test ensured that there were statistically significant differences between the pre andpost-tests, χ2 (1) = 37.026, p = .000. The result suggests that the participants learned to make well-structured
English essays.
3.4. Relationship between writing products and critical thinking exams
It may be worth mentioning the relationship between students’ writing products and their scores in criticalthinking exams. Students can be categorized into following three groups based on their paragraph structure in
the pre-test and the post-test (N.B. No student deteriorated his or her paragraph structure):Group A: both pre-test essay and post-test essay had a good structure;
Group B: though the pre-test essay did not have a good structure, the post-test one had a good structure;
Group C: neither pre-test essay nor post-test essay had a good structure.
As indicated in Table 3, the first two groups increased their scores in the critical thinking skills exam. On theother hand, the last group did not increase their scores.
Table 3: Change in paragraph structure of students’ essay
Paragraph structure in
essay
Pre-test
Post-test

Number ofStudents

16

Mean score of critical thinking skills exam(with standard deviation in parentheses)
Pre-test
Post-test
Increase

Group A
Group B
Group CGood
Not goodNot goodGood
Good
Not good

18
39
5

13.61 (3.60)
13.77 (2.93)
13.60 (3.36)

14.83 (3.82)
14.90 (3.01)
13.20 (2.49)

1.22 (3.67)
1.13 (3.91)-0.40(4.28)

Though we do not have enough data to make an argument, it seems that those who did not grasp theconcept of paragraph structure tended to fail to improve their critical thinking skills. Perhaps the last group
lacked motivation in class. Insufficient motivation might affect their performance in essay and in criticalthinking separately. Or, as we are inclined to suggest, efforts in essay writing affected students’ criticalthinking skills. We may need a better study design and more data to confirm this.

4. Conclusion
We conducted this study to investigate the relationship between writing lessons and critical thinking skills. After
experiencing three lessons on how to write a good-structured paragraph/essay, the students’ scores on the criticalthinking skills exam increased with a significant difference. In addition, the students wrote with better paragraphstructures in the post-test writing on the topic that was the same as the pre-test. Those who improved their essays
scored high were the ones who also increased their self-evaluation scores on the questionnaire on theirbeliefs/attitude toward argumentative essay writing from the perspective of critical thinking. Thus, we canconclude that the writing lessons helped the students to form some elementary critical thinking skills in their L2
and that the students became better writers of English composition.
Finally, we need to mention the limitations of the study. Most of them could be attributed to the study design.
First of all, we could not have a control group where the participants were not given English writing lessons. If theparticipants had been divided into two groups (the experimental group and the control group), we could havecompared the two groups and clarified the impact of English writing instruction. It should also be noted, however,that having a control group is difficult for practical and ethical reasons. It would be difficult to obtain cooperationfrom high schools if some students did not have a chance to receive formal English writing lessons. In addition,
our participants are biased in the sense that they belonged to the same high school. If more high school students
from different schools had participated, different results would have been achieved.
Furthermore, we lack definite information on the critical thinking skills exam and we cannot evaluate thesignificance of the score in the exam properly without further investigation. Also, it is not clear how the criticalthinking skills change when the participants have more lessons. We believe that further studies need to be carriedout in order to settle these matters.
Despite these shortcomings, we can conclude that writing lessons on how to construct a good paragraph/essays
contributed to fostering some critical thinking skills of Japanese high school students to some degree.

Acknowledgement
We would like to express our gratitude to the Japan Institute of Lifelong Learning for allowing us to use thetrial version of their test.

References
Bean, J. (2001). Engaging ideas. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons.
Blue, T. (2010). Why students should have to learn how to write discursive essays. Retrieved fromhttp://teacherblue.homestead.com/discursive.html
Cottrell, S. (2005). Critical thinking skills. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Central Council for Education. (2016). Yōchien, shōgakkō, chūgakkō, kōtōgakkō oyobi tokubetsu shien gakkō
no gakushū shidō yōryō tō no kaizen oyobi hitsuyō na hōsaku ni tsuite [On improvement andnecessary measures for the Course of Study of kindergarten, elementary school, junior high school,seniorhighschoolandspecialsupporteducationschool].
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http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/shingi/chukyo/chukyo0/toushin/1380731.htm
de Zafra, C. (1957). Teaching for critical thinking. The Clearing House 31(8), 453-456. doi:
10.1080/00098655.1957.11475621
Ennis, R. (1991). Critical thinking: A streamlined conception. Teaching Philosophy, 14(1), 5-24. doi:
10.5840/teachphil19911412
Goodwin, B. (2014). Teach critical thinking to teach writing. Educational Leadership, 71(7), 78-80.
Hillocks, G. (2010). Teaching argument for critical thinking and writing: An introduction. English Journal
99(6), 24-32.
Klefstad, J. (2015). Environments that foster inquiry and critical thinking in young children: Supporting17

children’s natural curiosity. Childhood Education 91(2), 147-149.
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Kusumi, T. (2011). Hihanteki shikō towa [What is critical thinking?]. In T. Kusumi, M. Koyasu, & Y.
Michita (Eds.), Hihanteki no shikōryoku o hagukumu: Gakushiryoku to shakaijin kisoryoku no kiban
keisei [Developing critical thinking in higher education] (pp.2-24). Tokyo: Yūhikaku.
Kusumi, T. (2015). Hajimeni [Introduction]. In T. Kusumi & Y. Michita. (Eds.), Wādo mappu hihantekishikō: 21seiki o ikinuku riterashī no kiban [Word map critical thinking: Foundation of the literacy
for living in the 21st century] (pp. i-vi). Tokyo: Shin’yōsya.
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Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. (2009). Kōtōgakkō gakushū shidō yōryō[The course of study for senior high schools]. Tokyo: Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Scienceand Technology.
Oi, K. (2006). Kuritikaru ni essē o kaku [How to write an essay critically]. In T. Suzuki, K. Oi, & F. Takemae(Eds.), Kuritikaru shinkingu to kyōiku [Critical thinking and education] (pp.100-136). Kyoto, Japan:
Sekaishisōsha.
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doi: 10.1207/s15328023top2201_8
Appendix A. A sample material of critical thinking skills exam.
Q. Choose the response that best fits in the parenthesis.
Meg: The young man I met yesterday said he works at a bank near Central Station. My sister also
works at a bank near Central Station. So, they must work at the same bank.
Jim: That may not be true. (), so you can’t say that they work at the same bank.
a. There are many banks near Central Station
b. Many people work at a bank near Central Stationc. You told me your sister works at a very small bankd. Not many young men work at the bank your sister works in

Appendix B. Questionnaire used in the study and its result.
Answer (Number of students)
Question

Test

Q14

Q16

Q17

Do you like writing an essay?

Are you good at writing an essay?

Do you think that learning how towrite an essay is useful?

Mean2Median

6

5

4

3

2

1

NA

Pre

11

15

18

10

7

2

0

4

4.11

Post

7

17

20

8

10

1

0

4

4.00

Pre

11

19

20

11

2

0

0

4

4.41

Post

6

24

19

9

4

1

0

4

4.25

Pre

0

1

12

8

25

17

0

2

2.29

Post

2

2

15

11

19

13

1

2

2.68

2

Strictly speaking, the data from questions based on Likert scale is ordinal, and the concept of arithmetic mean cannot
be applied to ordinal data. We calculated means simply for convenience.

18

Q21

Q22

Q23

Q24

Can you read what the writer implies?

Pre

4

6

15

23

13

2

0

3

3.35

Post

4

4

13

26

11

3

2

3

3.26

Are you aware of a model of an essay
so that you can construct an essay
using the model?
Can you present your own arguments
clearly?

Pre

4

13

20

20

6

0

0

4

3.83

Post

5

6

11

28

10

1

2

3

3.43

Pre

2

3

15

22

18

3

0

3

3.05

Post

4

5

8

25

13

6

2

3

3.08

Are you aware of the “line ofreasoning” when you write an essay?

Pre

3

11

16

26

7

0

0

3

3.63

Post

5

7

24

17

7

1

2

4

3.72

Answer (Number of students)
Question

Test

Q25

Do you find it easy to separate key
points from other materials?

Q26

Q27

Q28

Q29

Q30

Q31

Q33

Q34

Q35

Q36

Q37

Q38

Median

Mean

6

5

4

3

2

1

NA

Pre

4

9

26

18

6

0

0

4

3.79

Post

5

6

19

18

12

1

2

3

3.52

Can you recognize whether the writeruses misleading information or
distortion to persuade the reader?
Can you easily show the reasons that
support your opinion in an argument?

Pre

4

8

22

20

6

3

0

4

3.60

Post

6

5

16

23

9

2

2

3

3.51

Pre

4

9

22

18

7

3

0

4

3.62

Post

5

7

21

16

9

2

3

4

3.62

Are you aware of how your current
beliefs
might
prejudicefairconsideration of an issue?
Do you know the structure of anargument?

Pre

4

5

16

20

13

5

0

3

3.24

Post

5

3

14

26

6

7

2

3

3.25

Pre

4

8

19

23

8

1

0

3

3.59

Post

4

3

16

23

9

5

3

3

3.25

Can you consider and evaluate
different points of view fairly?

Pre

2

3

12

23

20

3

0

3

2.97

Post

4

2

12

23

15

5

2

3

3.05

Can you point out the parts which are
illogical in an argument?

Pre

2

7

20

21

9

3

1

3

3.40

Post

5

6

17

22

9

1

3

3

3.55

Did you decide your opinion before
writing?

Pre

0

2

6

14

24

15

2

2

2.28

Post

3

5

8

11

21

10

5

2

2.76

Did you decide what and how you
were going to write before writing an
essay?
Did you try to make your essay clear
for readers when you were writing an
essay?
Did you use concrete examples orconcrete explanations when you werewriting an essay?
Did you try to write your essay
logically?

Pre

4

11

17

18

10

1

2

4

3.64

Post

3

5

7

23

15

5

5

3

3.02

Pre

5

10

18

20

5

2

3

4

3.73

Post

4

5

23

20

4

2

5

4

3.64

Pre

3

2

8

17

23

8

2

2

2.70

Post

3

2

8

20

22

3

5

3

2.88

Pre

4

12

20

15

7

3

2

4

3.70

Post

3

6

12

23

11

3

5

3

3.28

Did you try to make the flow of thecontent clear when you were writing?

Pre

6

10

17

22

5

1

2

4

3.79

Post

3

6

20

20

8

1

5

3.5

3.53

19