Insight from the association between critical thinking and English argumentative writing: catering to English learners’ writing ability

English argumentative writing (EAW)

Although writing in school includes a range of genres, the argumentative type is particularly significant (Lin et al., 2020). Improving and fostering argumentative writing performance is a vital component of English teaching reforms in schools and universities globally as well as a main challenge for teachers of English writing at the K–12 and college levels (Newell et al., 2011).

In the United States, EAW is emphasized as a passport to further educational and job opportunities (Watt, 2010). Similarly, in China, argumentation is one of the key assessment elements on English language proficiency, especially in the high-stakes college entrance examination, which plays an essential role in college admission decisions. Additionally, EAW tasks have been widely adopted in internationally renowned English general proficiency examinations, such as the International English Language Testing System (IELTS), the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), and the Canadian Academic English Language Test (CAEL).

Regarding the IELTS, for instance, empirical findings have established that there is no correlation between argumentation writing and students’ IELTS test scores (Coffin, 2004). However, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report revealed that approximately one-quarter of the students provide logical reasons in support of the examples they use in their argumentative essays, and students often fail to consider alternative perspectives (National Center for Education Statistics, 2012). These problems also occur in China (Cai, 2017; Zhang, 2017; Cai, 2019). As stipulated in the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China (2018), Grade 12 students in China should be able to actively utilize resources to clearly express opinions in writing in a structured manner (Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, 2018). Thus, improving English argumentation proficiency is an important but difficult part of teaching and learning English writing in China.

From a cognitive perspective (Hayes, 1996; Graham, 2018; MacArthur & Graham, 2016), English argumentation is a process of problem-solving requiring self-regulation to reach the author’s rhetorical targets (Graham & Harris, 1989). Writing proficiency is affected adversely by the inability to strategically allocate limited cognitive resources (Ferretti & Fan, 2016). Skilled writers write arguments based on their knowledge reserve of the topic, critical assessment standards, and argumentative discourse (Ferretti & Lewis, 2019a).

What are the critical evaluation standards on argumentative writing achievements? Previous studies including Nimehchisalem & Mukundan (2011), Paek & Kang (2017), Ferretti & Graham (2019b) and Wang, Lee & Park (2022) have inspired research about English argumentation and have promoted EAW performance assessments. An initial objective was to identify the linguistic features in high-quality writing samples (Witte & Faigley, 1981; McNamara et al., 2015), which Wen Qiufang and Liu Runzhou did. Based on close scrutiny of the 20 best compositions from 1–4 grades of English major undergraduates in China, the authors hypothesized four parameters (i.e., relevance, explicitness, coherence, and sufficiency) accompanying the supposedly four thinking stages in writing (i.e., topic comprehension, thesis statement development with supporting arguments, organizing a coherent discourse, and putting ideas into writing). Afterward, the authors tried to verify/falsify their hypotheses by marking another 100 compositions of the same kind twice over a 3-month period, and doing so yielded a framework for analyzing the general features of Chinese students’ EAW and salient problems in the students’ abstract thinking (Wen & Liu, 2006). The Evaluation Criteria for English Argumentative Writing (ECEAW) they constructed has been widely used in China (Liu, 2013; Yang, 2014; Xu, 2016; Li, 2018). However, until now, the analysis of English argumentation has mostly been at the undergraduate level, and little attention has been given to high school students in China.

Critical thinking

An essential skill in education is critical thinking because it helps students to reflect on and grasp their own viewpoints. This skill allows students to use their own observations and expertise to make sense of things (Raj et al., 2022). Various definitions of critical thinking have been given. For instance, Glaser (1942) defined critical thinking as “an attitude of being disposed to consider in a thoughtful way the problems and subjects that come within the range of one’s experience; knowledge of the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning; and some skills in applying these methods”. This definition considers critical thinking as a synthesis of attitude, knowledge, and skills. However, Ennis (1987) insisted critical thinking was “a reasonable, reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do”. He believed critical thinking contained both critical thinking silks and personality traits.

Critical thinking has also been described as “a mode of thinking, about any subjects, contents or problems, in which the thinker improves the quality of his or her thinking by skillfully taking charge of the structures inherent in thinking and imposing intellectual standards upon them” (Paul & Binker, 1990). These definitions reveal that critical thinking is a mode of thinking on the subjects within our realm of experience and helping us make decisions. Critical thinking should be reflective, reasonable, and logical, containing both critical thinking skills and personal dispositions. Peter Facione offered a more precise definition in the Delphi Report. It states that critical thinking is “a purposeful, self-regulatory judgment which results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and inference, as well as explanation of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations upon which that judgment is based” (Facione, 1990).

To this end, critical thinking consists of a learned collection of analytic thinking skills and a tendency to engage in the reasoning process (Halpern, 2003). Earlier studies have shown that the critical thinking disposition (CTD) is an inner motivation that guides decision-making and problem-solving, and that is essential for the application of critical thinking and the tendency to think critically (Colucciello, 1997; Facione, Facione & Giancarlo, 2000). Based on these studies, Fesler-Birch (2005) further found that CTD could be evaluated as a baseline for critical thinking performance.

The California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory (CCTDI) (Facione & Facione, 1992) is one of the most well established instruments for assessing students’ CTDs, designed on the definition of critical thinking formulated by Peter Facione in 1990. The CCTDI contains seven subdispositions with 75 items: inquisitiveness, self-confidence, truth-seeking, open-mindedness, analyticity, systematicity, and cognitive maturity (Facione, Facione & Sanchez, 1994). Since its development in 1990s, the CCTDI has been widely used in CTD studies (Miri, David & Uri, 2007; Zuriguel-Pérez et al., 2017; Du et al., 2013). The CCTDI has different versions. Luo and Yang were the first to translate the CCTDI into Chinese and to use it in in China (Lou & Yang, 2001).

After being revised twice, this version has good internal consistency and reliability. Peng et al. (2004) argued that, although the previous Chinese version of the CCTDI included semantic equivalence, it ignored cultural factors. Therefore, Peng et al. (2004) adapted and modified the CCTDI to obtain a conceptually equivalent Chinese variant that has the cultural sensitivity to be applied with Chinese-speaking students. However, Peng et al. (2004) chose nursing students to test the instrument’s validity and reliability and doing so limits the questionnaire’s generalizability. Therefore, Wen et al. (2009) retranslated the CCTDI and constructed the CTDI–CV, mainly focused on checking the consistency of the Chinese translation with the original English, leaving no translation traces, and making the language consistent and smooth but not overly colloquial (Wen et al., 2009). The revised CTDI–CV contains 54 items with eight subdispositions: analyticity (the ability to independently and objectively analyze life problems and to foresee the outcome or consequences of an event based on facts), truth-seeking (the desire to seek the truth and to explore the essence of things), open-mindedness (tolerance and openness to external things and different perspectives), systematicity (the ability to overcome difficulties and solve problems with perseverance and an indomitable will), cognitive maturity (a measure of whether the understanding of things is comprehensive and life events are considered carefully), inquisitiveness (an instinct people have to be curious about the unknown), self-confidence (the trust in one’s ability to do a certain thing well or solve a certain problem), and justice (conscious criteria for judging whether something is morally and legally fair) (Wen et al., 2009). Details have been shown in Table 1.

The CTDI–CV has generally been proven to be a reliable and valid instrument for assessing Chinese students’ CTDs (Wen et al., 2010a, 2010b, 2011). However, the CTDI–CV has mostly been used for undergraduates or postgraduates and a preliminary analysis revealed that its internal reliability in this study was not acceptable. Therefore, the instrument was slightly modified for high school students to ensure its reliability and validity. Additionally, the reliability and validity analyses for the modified CTDI–CV were checked by educators and experts at the School of Educational Science in Minnan Normal University, China.

EAW and CTD

English argumentation is a “problem-solving” cognitive procedure, demanding self-regulation to reach the author’s targets (Graham & Harris, 1989), and critical thinking is “a purposeful, self-regulatory judgment which results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and inference, as well as explanation of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations upon which that judgment is based” (Facione, 1990). Dong & Yue (2015) have posited that English writing as a cognitive process is indivisible from the cultivation of critical thinking ability, and their study employing questionnaires and writing test has shown that students’ critical thinking abilities are related to on their English writing performance. Therefore, improving the ability to think critically is essential for fostering English writing abilities (Li, Gu & Qian, 2019).

Dong & Yue (2015) showed that students’ English writing proficiency is strongly influenced by their critical thinking skills, and suggested that cultivating students’ critical thinking skill is necessary for improving their English writing competence. Since EAW depends on critical thinking ability to analyse facts, produce and organise ideas, maintain opinions, make comparisons, judge arguments, and solve problems by the use of existing information, previous knowledge, experience, and world knowledge when writing’ (Barnawi, 2011). However, what is the relationship between them?

Based on an analysis of 181 prospective teachers from six different departments in Turkey, Bayat (2014) found that the prospective teachers’ critical thinking levels were related statistically significantly with their academic writing success. Similarly, a significant and positive relationship between college students’ critical thinking skills and their English writing ability was found in China (Wu, 2016). Based on a study of 104 English major students, Soodmand Afshar, Movassagh & Radi Arbabi (2017) established a strong correlation between students’ critical thinking skills and their English writing abilities. In addition, a significant relationship between the CTD and English writing has regularly been reported.

McLean (2005) claimed that a negative CTD accounts for a low writing proficiency. A study involving 73 senior English major students at a Shanghai university showed that the students were weak in CTDs and had comprehension difficulties as well as in demonstrating in-depth rhetorical clarity in academic English writing. This result implied a correlation between students’ CTDs and their English academic writing performance (Mu, 2016). Liu (2018) explored 120 postgraduate students majoring in English and found a significant positive correlation between students’ CTDs and their academic English writing. A positive linear correlation has also been found between critical thinking and English writing among secondary school students. Jin (2021) also examined 211 grade eight students’ CTDs at the junior high school level and found that students demonstrated negative CTDs, which were positively correlated with their English writing achievements. Besides, Liu (2021) found a significant correlation between the CTDs of grade 12 students and their writing proficiency on English practical writing and continual writing tasks.

All the above discussions emphasize the importance of critical thinking to English writing, and some researchers further explored the relationship between critical thinking and English writing. In these studies, participants were mainly form college, and the types of English writing involved were various, including picture writing, story writing, academic writing and so on. In summary, very few studies focus on the relationship between high school students’ critical thinking and their performance on English argumentative writing. Hopefully, this study may bridge the gaps in the literature.

Procedure and participants

This paper focus on high school student’ critical thinking and their proficiency on English argumentative writing, so the population is all the high school students. A purposive sampling of high school students was used in this study. The reason for purposive sampling is the better matching of the sample to the aims and objectives of the research, thus improving the rigour of the study and trustworthiness of the data and results (Campbell et al., 2020). Because this study aimed to find out the relationship between critical thinking and English writing, it’s better to take students with higher ability on critical thinking and English writing expression as participants, so that the association can be clearer and easier to be found. Since the development of critical thinking is limited by the level of cognitive development, critical thinking sprouts from childhood and get higher especially mature in senior grade of high school (Ruggiero, 2012). Considering this, a sample of 189 students from grade 12 students was involved in the study. All the participants were taken from a high school in Zhangzhou, China, because they were easily accessible to the investigators. Of the 189 questionnaires distributed to the students, 156 (84%) valid copies were returned.

Additionally, students were given 40 min to write a 120-word English argumentative essay on the same topic, “No smoking in public places?”, which was prompted by sources from a relevant survey mentioned in the test (details in Table 2). In the writing, students were asked to show their opinions, defend sub-arguments and criticize counter-argument.

Two English teachers from Minnan Normal University scored the tests, and the average of the two scores was taken as the final score for students’ EAW performance. The teachers had taught and studied English writing for over 13 years. A head teacher from Minnan Normal University who was specialized in English writing teachers’ training and relevant researches was responsible for the evaluation and training. Before the formal scoring, the head teacher trained the two teachers based on ECEAW. After the training, the two teachers were asked to score some samples of EAW to test whether they have known the score criteria well. The result showed they have understood ECEAW well, and the scores given by them had no significant difference. Afterwards, the two teachers started to score the EAW from participants in two separate rooms to ensure the process was transparent. After scoring, the two teachers cross-checked all the scores, which the head teacher then rechecked and did not find significant difference. If there were, he would take careful. Then, since the authors have been studied English writing for several years and also specialize in English writing study, they cross-checked of everything to make sure the process and results were unbiased. This triangulation process ensured the reliability of the final scores. Table 3 presents the descriptive statistics of the final EAW scores.

Measures

A correlational research design was adopted to explore the relationship between the CTD (independent variable) and EAW (dependent variable). The CTD level was measured by the Chinese version of California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory (CTDI-CV), and participants’ performance on EAW was measured by the Evaluation Criteria for English Argumentative Writing (ECEAW).

CTDI-CV

The CTDI–CV was adapted by Wen et al. (2009) from the CCTDI (Facione & Facione, 1992) and has been widely applied in the Chinese context (Jin, 2021; Li, 2011; Ruan, 2012; Li, 2018; Lu, 2020), mainly in studies involving English learners.

Harman’s single-factor test had an explanatory variance for the first common factor of 25.76% is less than 40%, confirming no evidence of common method variance. Regarding the CTDI–CV questionnaire, eight subdispositions had 54 items, measuring the following subscales: analyticity (seven items), truth-seeking (seven items), open-mindedness (seven items), systematicity (six items), cognitive maturity (eight items), inquisitiveness (six items), self-confidence (seven items), and justice (six items). Each item was rated on a six-point scale of “strongly agree” (6), “agree” (5), “somewhat agree” (4), “somewhat disagree” (3), “disagree” (2) and “strongly disagree” (1), and the total scores of the CTDI–CV were between 54 and 324. Unloaded items were removed in the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and the remaining items were retained for all eight factors. The items in systematicity, inquisitiveness, and justice remained the same. However, analyticity, open-mindedness, and self-confidence decreased to six items, and truth-seeking and cognitive maturity decreased to five items. Details are shown in Table 1.

The instrument reliability was analyzed using Cronbach’s alpha, and the eight subscales in CTD showed reliability scores of 0.73, 0.71, 0.74, 0.70, 0.80, 0.72, 0.81, and 0.79. As all reliability scores were beyond the 0.7 threshold, the constructs were determined to be reliable (Hancock & Mueller, 2013; Saleem et al., 2020; Byrne, 2016).Construct validity ensured the questionnaire’s validity, and six factors were generated using an EFA. The results showed that the validity was acceptable (Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin test = 0.629 > 0.6; Bartlett’s test of sphericity: ${\chi }^2$ = 2,665.49, df = 1,431, p < 0.01; factor loadings for all factor’s items: 0.68–0.81; total variance: 66.39%, eigenvalue >1). Thus, the tool was reliable and valid.

ECEAW

The ECEAW was determined by Wen and used to measure students’ EAW proficiency and was divided into five levels (i.e., best, good, moderate, poor, and bad) according to four parameters (i.e., relevance, explicitness, coherence, and sufficiency) accompanying the supposed four thinking stages in English writing: topic comprehension, thesis statement development with supporting arguments, organizing coherent discourses, and putting ideas into writing (Wen & Liu, 2006). Table 4 provides the ECEAW details.

Data analyses

The data analyses were performed using SPSS version 23 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA). Chinese high school students’ CTDs were approached using a descriptive statistical analysis, which illustrated the students’ CTDs and eight subdispositions. Next, as this study focused on the relationship between the students’ CTD and their performance on EAW, a Pearson correlation analysis was employed. It was followed to determine whether there was any significant correlation between the students’ EAW proficiency and their CTDs as well as its eight dimensions. Last, in order to reduce interference between the variables, multiple regression analyses were conducted to examine the prediction of the students’ CTDs subdispositions and their writing proficiency on English argumentation. The prediction of the different CTD dimensions for argumentative writing was explored in the regression analysis in detail.

During data screening, 33 questionnaires found to be incomplete and were thus removed. The instrument’s face and content validity were ensured by educational experts from the School of Educational Science in Minnan Normal University, China. The data’s internal reliability was determined by calculating Cronbach’s α coefficients, and the construct validity was verified by conducting an EFA using the SPSS package.

Ethical concerns and consent detail

Ethics committee approval was obtained from Zhejiang Normal University’s institutional review board. The ethical principle of informed consent was upheld: each participant in the questionnaire was informed in advance of what was to be studied, and its possible benefits and impacts. All were informed of their right to withdraw their agreement to participate at any stage before the study was published. Finally, the researchers upheld the right to privacy by preserving the participants’ anonymity at all points in the research process, ensuring that the publication of the research would not result in any conflicts of interest.

The two instruments involved in this study, namely The Chinese version of California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory (CTDI-CV) and Evaluation Criteria for English Argumentative Writing (ECEAW) were used to measure participants’ CTD level and their performance on EAW. Both instruments are from Wen Qiufang, and the researchers have permission to use these instruments from the copyright holders/authors.

Limitations and future research

This study is limited in the research region and critical thinking aspects. First, the present study is limited to a developing, non-Western, Asian high schools. Considering this, high school students from other cities or relevant teachers should be involved in future study to deeply understand the relationship between CTD and EAW. Second, the current study is limited to the CTD, and other critical thinking aspects such as critical thinking skills have not yet to be explored. Incorporating other critical thinking factors in future studies could generate insightful results. Besides, the possible differences caused by years of study or other demographic factors need to be examined in future research.

Conclusion and implications

EAW teaching and learning has been of prime importance for English education in China, since EAW performance is currently significant on both international and domestic English language proficiency tests. To discover the predictive influencing factors on EAW proficiency improve EAW performance, this study explored the relationship between the CTD (independent variable) and the EAW (dependent variable) proficiency of high school students with an emphasis on the CTD subscales. High school students’ CTDs were overall positive, and students’ EAW performance correlated significantly with the overall CTD and its four sub-dispositions of cognitive maturity, truth-seeking, analyticity, and justice. Furthermore, among the eight CTD subscales, only four dispositions (cognitive maturity, truth-seeking, analyticity and justice) showed a significantly predictive validity on EAW performance. The findings of the current study will contribute to the knowledge of Chinese high school students’ cognition and English learning status. In addition, it has implications for the enhancement of EAW teaching and learning in China.

The findings showed that high school students in Zhangzhou, China generally have positive CTDs, i.e., they perform well on the abilities of analyticity, truth-seeking, systematicity, open-mindedness, cognitive-maturity, inquisitiveness, self-confidence, and justice. In addition, their CTDs have been proven to be related to their performance on EAW. Specifically, their dispositions on cognitive maturity, truth-seeking, analyticity, and justice are related to their EAW proficiency score. A further analysis revealed that Chinese high school students’ EAW performance can be predicted by their abilities in terms of cognitive maturity, truth-seeking, analyticity and justice. These results provide references for English teachers to improve students’ English argumentative writing performance.

Primarily, in line with previous study findings in China (Sun, 2020; Ren, 2020), instructors in China should be concerned about students’ CTDs, since students from China and other, more developed countries continue to have a gap. Secondarily, a significant and positive correlation was found between EAW and CTD as well as its subdispositions—such as cognitive maturity, truth-seeking, analyticity, and justice—which has been confirmed in previous studies (Han, 2020; Feng, 2021). Therefore, instructors should provide clear CTD definitions for students and strengthen their critical thinking awareness. Lastly, teachers are urged to conduct suitable CTD training, especially on the four predictive subdispositions (i.e., cognitive maturity, truth-seeking, analyticity and justice), which could foster and facilitate four thinking stages involved in EAW and directly improve high school students’ EAW performance.

EAW is included as a prompt in the writing sections of some international standardized English exams (e.g., TOEFL and IELTS) and English for Specific Purposes exams, which necessitate argumentative writing. Besides, EAW is a crucial skill in China because the performance on English argumentation regards as a key assessment element on English language proficiency, especially in the high-stakes college entrance examination, which plays an essential role in college admission decisions. Teachers of English writing in high school should focus on students’ critical thinking and help them do a better job of analyzing the topic, establishing a layout, and organizing and writing argumentation logically, especially because EAW skills increasingly play crucial roles in students’ general academics at all of their study levels (Németh & Kormos, 2001).