An Approach for Embedding Critical Thinking in

Feature Article

An Approach for Embedding Critical Thinking in Second Language Paragraph Writing LISA CHASON University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

DIANNE LOYET University of Illinois at Springfield

LUANN SORENSON University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

ANASTASIA STOOPS Columbia University Writing textbooks for English language learners frequently teach a paragraph pattern that is limited to topic sentence, support, and concluding sentence. Although beginning second language (L2) writers benefit from having a structured way to organize their ideas, as they advance, this type of writing can sound trite and uncritical. To provide a deeper understanding of how L2 learners can develop critical thinking skills in paragraph writing, this article presents empirical research on intermediate to advanced L2 writers enrolled in an 8-week intensive English program where they were taught how to use the TBSIR (topic, bridge, support, interpretation, return) framework. Using a double-blind rating approach, the study reveals that instruction in TBSIR positively impacts writing quality regardless of native language, suggesting that a writing framework with a rubric that includes critical thinking criteria provides developing writers with the guidance they need to move from banal and formulaic writing to more analytic and thoughtful prose. doi: 10.1002/tesj.288

TESOL Journal 0.0, xxxx 2016 © 2016 TESOL International Association

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Several years ago we recognized that the framework for paragraphs used by standard intermediate English as a second language (ESL) writing textbooks (topic, supporting, concluding sentences) was resulting in our students producing fairly flat and nonreflective writing, with a superficial or mechanical synthesis of facts. This is a common area of difficulty for second language (L2) writers (Ferris, 2016; Hamp-Lyons, 1991; Hyland, 2002; Severino, 2001), and we were concerned that without deeper and more critical practice, the prematriculated population in our intensive English program would not be well prepared for U.S. college classwork. To remedy this, we introduced the framework of TBSIR (topic, bridge, support, interpretation, return), based in part on Blass and Pike-Baky (2008).

TBSIR: TOPIC, BRIDGE, SUPPORT, INTERPRETATION, RETURN TBSIR is an approach to paragraph organization that can be adapted for teaching academic writing for intermediate to advanced students. Many approaches to L2 writing instruction promote complexity in the pre-writing stage, by including reading, discussion, brainstorming, planning, and reflection (e.g., Dollahite & Haun, 2012; Folse, Muchmore-Vokoun, & Solomon, 2014; Leki, 1998; Raimes, 1998; Reid, 1994). Likewise, the learning objectives of our program maximize students’ knowledge of the topic and opportunities to plan their writing. However, by adding the TBSIR framework, we are able to promote targeted critical thinking in subsequent stages of drafting as well. TBSIR has its roots in the cognitivist work of Flower and Hayes (1981). In their pioneering study, which revealed the recursive nature of writing, Flower and Hayes pointed to the many competing claims on the developing writer: ”If the writer must devote conscious attention to demands such as spelling and grammar, the task of translating [i.e., writing1] can interfere with the more global process of planning what one wants to 1

In Flower and Hayes’s (1981) original cognitive model, translating refers to the process of converting to text ideas generated in the planning stage.

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say” (1981, p. 373). In a similar vein, McCutchen (1996) and McCutchen, Teske, and Bankston (2008) stressed that working memory is a potential limitation in the composing process. A number of L2 textbook writers (e.g., Boardman, 2008; Hogue, 2014; Reid, 1994) have recognized this phenomenon and turned to guided composition as a solution. As Reid (1994) explained in the preface to her textbook The Process of Paragraph Writing, this approach provides ”a series of ’guidelines’ that function as the framework for writing” (p. x). In recent research, Ong and Zhang (2013) found that providing L2 writers with a framework ”successfully reduced the cognitive demands of the task and was effective in freeing the writers’ working memory resources so that they could attend to other strategic aspects of writing” (p. 393). Our TBSIR framework is one such form of guided composition. Although some would critique guided composition for being too static or prescriptive (see Ferris & Hedgcock, 2013, p. 75), we have found that language learners appear to benefit from the scaffolding and support. Hyland (2016) concurs when he notes that such ”recursive, planned, and goal-driven” composing models are now commonplace in writing teachers’ ”methodological repertoires” but states that there is a lack of evidence for their success (pp. 155–156). We believe the TBSIR framework allows for both language and rhetorical development for our students and have undertaken this study to determine if their writing proficiency is indeed improving. Each paragraph written according to the TBSIR framework includes a topic sentence (T), major and minor support (S), and a return (concluding)2 sentence (R). In addition to these conventional elements, the bridge sentence (B) and the interpretation sentence (I) are added; these promote critical thinking about the topic and richer development of supporting details. The bridge sentence follows the topic sentence and creates a connection between the (general) topic sentence and (more specific) supporting sentences. The interpretation sentence follows 2

We use the term return instead of concluding sentence to emphasize that the final sentence of a paragraph is a return to the topic sentence and the controlling idea.

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the supporting sentences and states the writer’s assessment of the significance of the supporting information. Students benefit from using this approach because doing so requires them to write about the topic at a deeper level. Teachers benefit because it provides them with a concrete tool to teach critical thinking and address the problem of staid and unreflective writing. The TBSIR framework may strike some as artificial. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine proficient writers reviewing their texts to ensure that each paragraph has a bridge and interpretation. However, cursory exploration shows these elements do occur in published writing. This excerpt, from a university library website, uses a clear TBSIR paragraph structure: The University of Illinois has a long history of lore [topic]. Stories passed down and around through generations of students are just as much a part of the University experience as are the buildings and structures that hold them [bridge]. Is there really a ghost in the English building, or a tractor buried under Memorial Stadium? Does rubbing Lincoln’s nose in Lincoln Hall really bring luck? [support]. Whether or not these stories are true is moot; each help to reveal our character and history [interpretation]. (University Library, 2016)

This paragraph begins with a sentence that has a clear topic (University of Illinois) and controlling idea (a long history of lore) that sets the parameters of what is to follow. The second sentence, the bridge, restates the controlling idea (stories passed down and around through generations of students) and links it to the idea of campus buildings, which are then exemplified in the support (English building, Memorial Stadium, and Lincoln Hall). The effect is to gradually take the reader from the controlling idea in the topic sentence to the support by bridging ideas found in both. The final sentence provides an answer to the rhetorical questions that is insightful: It doesn’t matter if the tales are true or not because their greater purpose is to unite generations of students. This sentence fits the criteria of an interpretation sentence—analysis and reflection—the kind of sentence often missing from second language writers’ paragraphs. TBSIR, then, is not simply an instructor’s construct. 4

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TRANSFORMING A TSR PARAGRAPH Textbooks for intermediate second language writers of English almost universally teach a version of the topic, support, return (TSR) paragraph framework. For writing instructors, this model serves at least one useful purpose, which is to guide writers in ordering their ideas in a way that may not be readily apparent, even to those with extensive writing experience. Although students may at times find it constricting, the TSR model is also a reliable guide for intermediate students on how to arrange their ideas. When the TSR paragraph structure is mastered, learners can increase their focus on language use and create their own voice within a prescribed structure. At some point, however, the TSR model can seem too simplistic for writers with higher proficiency. The start of the support right after the topic sentence can seem abrupt, and the stacking of major and minor supporting points often feels mechanical and repetitious. The following paragraph was written by an advanced writer in our program.3 Despite strong syntactic control, the TSR version (without the italicized sentences) reads like a list of facts without insight into any larger meaning of those facts. In contrast, after the student adds bridge and interpretation sentences, the body paragraphs exhibit meaningful critical thinking: The political changes in Libya and its subsequent effect on the public had a negative impact on learning foreign languages. These changes kept weakening the effect of English on Arabic language to an extent that it became negligible. The most important reason for this is that teaching foreign languages was not allowed in Libya from 1975 to 1990. As a result, the majority of people who were studying at that time speak only Arabic language today. The English language that is used is limited to simple English words like ”sorry,” ”please,” ”friend,” and ”man,” and it is only common among the younger generation. The second reason is the limited resources. Books and DVDs in English and Internet connection were not supported by the government, and therefore were not affordable for the majority of people. Only a few wealthy people had a chance to learn foreign languages and most of them learned the English language. The third reason is 3

This paragraph has been included because it is a good illustration of TBSIR, but it was not written as part of our study.

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that people tend to consider using foreign languages in public places as a kind of affectation, and some of them will consider this as rude behavior. Even when friends are talking to each other in English, this would be considered as pretentious behavior. To avoid being rude or offending anybody, the English and Arabic languages were kept separate from each other, with English being just used partially in study or at work. Despite the current trend of learning and integrating English into Arabic language, the generation that was forbidden from learning English remains the main obstacle to integrating and expanding foreign languages in Libya. Thus, Libyan political changes played a major role in diminishing the acquisition of foreign languages among Libyans.

To connect to the topic sentence, the bridge expresses the same ideas of political change and their impact while narrowing the foreign languages to English. The first supporting point (The most important reason . . .) connects to the bridge, first, by the use of a pronoun (this) to refer back to the bridge and, second, by the repetition of a phrase used in the topic sentence and implied in the bridge (foreign languages). By coupling key words in the topic sentence with key words in the first supporting point, a sentence can be built that bridges the two parts of the paragraph, effectively smoothing out the cognitive leap from topic sentence to first supporting point. The interpretation in the paragraph is created by providing an observation not readily available to the reader: Those denied opportunities for foreign language learning in the past are the same ones who today are indirectly denying the development of foreign languages in a new generation in Libya. This sentence both analyses and reflects upon the supporting ideas and adds a level of higher order thinking to the text.

IMPLEMENTING CRITICAL THINKING When teachers incorporate TBSIR into instruction, students are afforded the opportunity to practice critical thinking. However, a review of literature from writing studies, second language writing instruction, and critical thinking in education indicates widespread disagreement over what constitutes critical thinking and how to teach it. Is it a disposition, a set of questions, a technique? Can it 6

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be taught or only modeled? Should it be a process incorporated into content courses and practiced in the context of particular disciplines or taught as a general, across-the-curriculum skill? Are there particular ways to best incorporate critical thinking into second language writing instruction? To answer these questions, our program has developed a multifaceted approach to critical thinking, informed by our understanding of associated literature, our perception of students’ needs, and our practice. Ennis (1991) and Mulnix (2012) define critical thinking as both (1) a learned skill and (2) an intellectual virtue (i.e., a disposition) that is more than the application of a set of logical principles and implies metacognitive awareness of the thinker’s own thought process. Mulnix stresses that applying logical rules is not critical thinking; determining which rules to follow is (p. 466). Two critical thinkers can disagree yet be equally adept at critical thinking—it is not what we think but how. Like Mulnix (2012), Van Gelder (2010) stresses the procedural nature of critical thinking. His perspective derives from a review of cognitive science, and he describes critical thinking as a higher order skill that can be developed and improved with practice. He recommends deliberate attention to the elements of argument and suggests activities that develop metacognitive awareness. Bean (2011), who combines writing pedagogy, critical thinking, and materials development, champions the writing task when he notes: ”The most intensive and demanding tool for eliciting sustained critical thought is a well-designed writing assignment . . . . When we make students struggle with their writing we are making them struggle with thought itself” (p. xvi). It is along these lines that our program recognized the need to incorporate critical thinking components within the standard paragraph form. TBSIR was developed as an approach that calls for analysis (in the bridge) and synthesis and reflection (in the interpretation), thereby helping students to develop metacognitive awareness along with their development in writing. Students who write with the TBSIR framework are not just applying rules; they are thinking critically. However, to fully develop the approach, we faced a number of challenges: (1) providing students with sufficient direction, (2) establishing agreement among teachers of Embedding Critical Thinking in L2 Paragraph Writing

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what to present and what to look for, and (3) measuring and assessing outcomes. Writing to a framework, also called guided composition, addresses the first challenge (Ferris & Hedgcock, 2013, p. 75). A framework provides detailed instructions for the writer to follow. For example, it might state, ”An introduction should include at least two background sentences followed by a thesis statement that predicts what will be included in each body paragraph.” Frameworks, as noted earlier, reduce the cognitive load of academic writing, thus facilitating language learning among L2 writers. Frameworks that include critical thinking processes can help students notice in which areas to incorporate analysis and synthesis and where to add reflection. This also helps to prepare them to use sources in research papers. Furthermore, teaching to a framework is valuable because it gives unity to the program and consistency to coursework design. A well-designed framework leads students to ask more questions, write more deeply, and create more interesting writing. See Appendix A for the sequence of activities for instructing students in the TBSIR framework. For challenge 2—establishing agreement among teachers of what to present and what to look for—teacher norming and training are essential so that there is agreement on what constitutes critical thinking, how to teach it, and how to assess it. To address this, we have created separate instructional materials and rubrics for each proficiency level in our program that instructors are required to use. We hold teacher workshops at the start of each term for both new and experienced writing instructors on how to use those materials and norming sessions to discuss what a TBSIR paragraph looks like at different proficiency levels. See Appendix B for an overview of the teacher training workshop. To address challenge 3, assessment, we concur with Crusan (2010) that assessments function best when they are created for specific purposes and that rubrics function well as assessment tools because they ”explain terms and clarify expectations” (p. 43). We designed an in-house rubric for assessment that clarifies for students our expectations not only of TBSIR but of overall writing quality. See Appendix C for the TBSIR rubric. 8

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Similarly, McLaughlin and Moore (2012) designed a critical thinking in writing rubric to incorporate the complexity of thought and analysis expected in college-level writing but often not included in writing rubrics. They encountered difficulty, however, with the 200-plus teacher participants who had expressly not been normed or trained to look for similar features in students’ writing. The researchers were surprised to find a majority of the teachers reacted more strongly to elements of voice and feeling than to the elements of academic critical thinking that the researchers had identified. These results affirm the importance of teacher training and norming so that there is agreement on what constitutes critical thinking and how to teach and assess it. In addition to helping students improve critical thinking, we realize that use of rubrics also improves teachers’ critical thinking. Specifically, ongoing discussion of developments in the field helps them apply critical thinking to their own work (Racelis & Matsuda, 2013). In sum, we believe that writing is a skill area in which critical thinking can be practiced, but it must be intentionally embedded by design; critical thinking is praxis-oriented and students develop critical thinking skills in use; the TBSIR approach allows critical thinking features to be incorporated into writing instruction; students benefit from guided composition with highly detailed framework assignments; and critical thinking is deepened and refined in the revision stage of process writing. Furthermore, a rubric that incorporates critical thinking elements can be consistently used to both assess students’ production and guide teachers with regard to the writing priorities for further development.

THE STUDY To test empirically whether incorporation of critical thinking elements into writing instruction via TBSIR improves overall quality of writing, we designed a study with the following research questions: 1. Will students enrolled in a course that includes instruction in TBSIR improve their writing proficiency? 2. Will the inclusion of bridge and interpretation sentences result in higher quality writing? Embedding Critical Thinking in L2 Paragraph Writing

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For the purposes of this study, we understand writing proficiency as the scores on the diagnostic and final essays, which use the same prompt.4 We expected to see an increase in the final score compared to the diagnostic if TBSIR instruction effectively improved writing proficiency. To test the effect of critical thinking elements on writing quality, we compared the correlations between scores obtained for the individual categories of bridge and interpretation on the grading rubric with the overall scores for diagnostic and final essay. An increase in individual scores for bridge and/or interpretation along with the increased final score compared with the diagnostic score would indicate that the inclusion of elements that we operationalized as elements of critical thinking improve overall quality of writing. Participants and Setting Thirty-seven students (12 female), who were enrolled in writing courses at our intensive English program during the 8-week 2014 summer session, gave their consent to use the diagnostic and final essays that they wrote for their writing courses. Thirteen of these students were new to TBSIR instruction. The average age of participants was 26 (range 19–50; median = 25; mode = 25). There were older participants, ages 42, 43, and 50, and they pulled the range up (Figure 1). Students came from 11 countries and spoke 8 different languages (Figures 2 and 3). The 8-week, 5-days-a-week summer session consisted of 20 hours of instruction per week distributed across the following domains: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and grammar. 4

In second language writing studies, researchers need to carefully consider the comparability of writing tasks in pretests and posttests (Mackey & Gass, 2005). To minimize the possibility that the findings would be related to any rhetorical differences in prompts, we used the same writing prompt for the pretest and posttest writing samples. Using the same prompt may raise concerns about an assessment practice effect, but any concerns should be alleviated by classic and current theories in memory retention. Namely, verbatim memory is lost as soon as an utterance has been understood (Bartlett, 1932; Binet & Henri, 1894; Bock & Brewer, 1974; Holtgraves, 2008; JohnsonLaird & Stevenson, 1970; Potter & Lombardi, 1998; Sachs, 1967). Although this strong view has been questioned by Gurevich, Johnson, and Goldberg (2010), who demonstrated that people can exactly recall sentences they heard while watching a video with a delay of up to 6 days, our students had over 30 days’ delay between the prompts. How much is retained in L2 is still an open question and an area of active research (see Ellis, 2015, for a review). We believe we were justified in using the same prompt because the time lapse was so great and because we wished to avoid introducing potentially new confounds with different prompts for the pretest and posttest.

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Figure 1. Percentage distribution of students’ ages

Participants were recruited from one intermediate writing course (11 students) and two advanced writing courses (26 students). Independent sample t-tests revealed no significant group differences (p > .1) for diagnostic and final essay scores (see Table 1). To increase statistical power, diagnostic and final essay scores were analyzed across all proficiency groups together. However, we analyzed the 13 students who had no prior exposure to TBSIR as a separate group. Data Collection Pretest. After placement into writing courses, participants completed a timed diagnostic essay (Appendix D). Embedding Critical Thinking in L2 Paragraph Writing

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Figure 2. Percentage distribution of students’ home countries

Treatment. Subsequently, students participated in three or more days of instruction modeling TBSIR. They completed one drafted TBSIR paragraph and two drafted essays in their courses. Posttest. At the end of the course, students wrote a timed final exam essay using the same prompt as the diagnostic essay. Findings Diagnostic (pretest) and final (posttest) essays were assessed by four raters with an in-house rubric created specifically for TBSIR paragraphs (Appendix C). Students could earn a maximum score of 54: up to six points for each of nine categories. Prior to rating the essays, raters participated in a norming session using the TBSIR rubric. Ratings were double-blind: Raters knew neither the identities of the students nor each other’s ratings. Because the focus of the study was paragraph structure, and because under 12

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Figure 3. Percentage distribution of students’ native languages TABLE 1. Results of Independent Sample t-Test Proficiency Group Comparisons for Diagnostic and Final Essay Scores (Maximum 54; up to 6 Points for Each of Nine Categories) Category Diagnostic Final

t-value .29 .12

df

p-value

35 35

.78 .91

timed conditions students may produce incomplete essays, only the first body paragraph of each essay was rated. Prior to rating the essays, raters participated in a norming session using the TBSIR rubric. Interrater reliability was determined by calculating the intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) using a two-way method with consistency type. Any ICC index above 0.5 is considered good (McGraw & Wong, 1996, pp. 39–40; Shrout & Embedding Critical Thinking in L2 Paragraph Writing

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TABLE 2. Intraclass Correlations for the Categories of Interest Category

ICC score

F-value

p-value

Diagnostic Final

0.80 0.61

4.80 2.54