1. Critical Thinking for Language Learning and Teaching: Methods for the 21st Century

CONCLUSION.
There is a lot of interest and valuable implementation of critical thinking already taking place at the Sultan Qaboos University Language Centre, and the majority of participants in this study recognized the central role played by critical thinking in effective language teaching and pedagogy. According to the teachers, fostering a perspective of renewed commitment to teaching critical thinking skills in line with a functional and communicative language-learning environment enhances students’ chances of success and achievement in both their studies and potentially the job market. However, in spite of the idented connection between critical thinking and other elements of language teaching and a variety of activities directly relating to language teaching, there is no consensus among teachers regarding the understanding and interpretation of thinking that “deans the content” (Paul, 2004) of what is taught in the English language classroom.¹³ Therefore, there is a need for targeted professional development for teachers in the area of critical thinking that will include a theoretical rationale, reinforcement of the basic principles of critical thinking and practical examples that teachers can utilize and better understand the idea of critical thinking in general and critical thinking approaches in teaching specially. As Paul (2004) stated, “If we understand critical thinking substantively, we not only explain the idea explicitly to our students, but we use it to give order and meaning to virtually everything we do as teachers and learners” (p.m.). Though the study examined teacher beliefs and methods of teaching critical thinking in the language classroom only at one institution of higher education in Oman, its results may provide relevant information to other English language teachers in similar educational contexts. In addition, they may stimulate further research on critical thinking skills development alongside language precedency to better conceptualize and organize the design and implementation of critical thinking teaching and student learning in the English language classroom.
This study reveals classroom activities that facilitate the students in improving their new language and comprehension on content subjects. Not only types of activity implemented, this research also scrutinizes students’ responses toward each of them. The evidence illustrates that quiz, group presentation, group teaching and group discussion are activities applied in dual-focused instruction of the English teacher training program, the place where this research was conducted. Students perceived that those activities are able to help them achieve the learning goal that is acquiring the language and theoretical sub-jects. From the findings and discussion, it can also be concluded that the key factor deter-mining the success of an activity is the teacher. Quiz will be a good activity to assist students in learning theories and a target language as far as the teachers choose the right type of quiz. The students show a positive response to the quiz that provides them sufficient opportunity to use the language, such as an essay instead of multiple-choice quiz. Similar to quiz, group presentation, group teaching, group discussion become a facilitative tool to gain the English skills and content if the teachers help the students without making them dependent on the teacher’ assistance. Teachers can also change classroom ambience in CLIL, which is usually demanding because of double focused goals to be more interesting and stress free by doing a fun thing such as making jokes while teaching.