Effectiveness of critical thinking approach in teaching reading comprehension

Abstract

The present experimental study entitled Effectiveness of Critical Thinking Approach in Teaching Reading Comprehension aimed at finding out the effectiveness of critical chinking approach in teaching reading comprehension and to provide some pedagogical usages. The thirty days workshop was carried out in Shree Sajhapur Higher Secondary School, Narayani Municipality – 1 , Chitwan with the preparation of lesson plans and test items for the data collection. The students of grade XI was taken as sample. A pre-test was conducted at the beginning of the study. Then all thirty-two students were grouped into two viz. Experimental and Controlled based on even and odd roll number. The experimental group was taught using critical thinking approach for 30 days whereas the students of controlled group were taught in usual way of teaching using lecture method. In course of the real teaching, a progress test was carried out in the middle and a post test was conducted at end for each groups. The results (average scores) of all tests were compared to determine the effectiveness of critical thinking approach against other usual conventional teaching strategies specially lecture methods. It was found that critical thinking approach is far more effective than usual classroom teaching for reading comprehension of Grade XI students.

This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter one is a introductory part of the research which includes general background, statement of problem, objectives research question, significance, delimitations, and operational definition of the key terms. Chapter two deals with review of theoretical literature and empirical literature, implication of review and conceptual framework. Chapter three presents methods and procedures followed by the researcher in design and method of the study, population sample and sampling strategy, study area, data collection tools, procedures and analysis as well as interpretation of data. Chapter four consists of results, discussions of data analysis and summary of findings. Based on the results, conclusion and implications to various level have been presented in chapter five.