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

Contents
INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………… 2
1. Critical Thinking for Language Learning and Teaching: Methods for the 21st Century ………………………………………………………………….….6
1.1 SOCIAL IMPACT OF THE INFORMATION AGE ………………………...6
1.2 The Realization of Meaning Phase …………………………………………...12
2. Classroom Activities in Content and Language Integrated Learning …....17
2.1 Content and language integrated learning ……………………………………17
2.2 Learning activities for CLIL ………………………………………………….18
CONCLUSION...………………………………………………………………...31
Bibliography……………………………………………………………………...33

INTRODUCTION
The information revolution affects societies across disciplines including tertiary level education. Students face an increasing need to deal with information overload, growing expectations and competition not only during their studies, but also in their approximating practice. To succeed in school and later at work, they need specific skills – to orient in, process and apply information available to them from utterly unfathomable resources, and what is more, in multiple languages. Therefore, mastering foreign languages provides them with a competitive advantage to succeed or excel in school or at the job market. Traditional language teaching methods still widely applied, frontal teaching or accent on grammar perfection and drills to name a few, become inefficient for globally interconnected world of the information age. This paper accentuates the need to enhance student critical thinking skills in combination with foreign language competences. It argues that developing critical thinking together with language skills activates study potential, refines key competencies for both study and job performance, and reflects the needs for modernization and optimizing teaching methods at the tertiary level. A concept for promoting critical thinking will be introduced in the context of foreign language instruction. The suggested approach is based on an existing critical thinking methodology, unique in its complexity as it describes a set of cooperative teaching methods for teachers as well as study techniques for students. While empowering teachers as mediators of the teaching process, and students as active participants of the learning process, this approach is a suitable reflection of the changing roles in the learning and teaching process that information society imprints into the relationship between the student and teacher. At the same time, it is a powerful tool to optimize the efficiency of the educational processes as a preparation for future practice. The information revolution brings along significant social changes. The accessibility of information has dramatically changed from limited to overabundant which poses new challenges for study and work. The question is no longer where and how to receive information but how it should be organized, processed and applied in daily practices. This phenomenon seems to affects a wide range of sectors across disciplines. The job market provides new types of positions. Employees require new types of skills. Companies and business change their structures. Enterprise and cooperation take upon a new character. Similarly, a significant transformation reaches the educational sector at all levels as, in reaction to the information and communication boom, a changing character of cooperation overwrites the traditional meanings and functions of the relationship between students and teachers. This raises a need to restructure educational approaches to content, instruction and methodologies¹. Tertiary education, being the last segment in the educational chain, represents a very important element in preparation for practice. The new generation of students is characteristic by a redefined relationship to information and their processing which requires fundamental structural changes to instructions and methodologies, more suitable to reflect current job market reality.
Take notice, that the Decree of the President of Uzbekistan of 3 October, 2019, No. DP-5843 “On measures to radically enhance the personnel policy and the system of state civil service in Uzbekistan” transferred the “El-Yurt Umidi” Foundation for training of specialists abroad and dialogue with compatriots under the Cabinet of Ministers to the jurisdiction of the Civil service development agency under the President of Uzbekistan. Establish that the El-Yurt Umidi Foundation for training of specialists abroad and dialogue with compatriots (hereinafter — Fund) is the legal successor in terms of rights, obligations and agreements, including international ones, of the El-Yurt Umidi Foundation for the training of specialists abroad and dialogue with compatriots under the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Uzbekistan. President of Uzbekistan SH. MIRZIYOYEV.Tashkent, February 11, 2021 y., No. DP-6168
Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is popular in a foreign language context in institutions where con-tent subjects are taught in English. The aim of CLIL that should be achieved is not only enabling students to comprehend the sub-jet areas but also facilitating their mastery on the target language. It is commonly used in areas where the students have not mastered the target language yet but they are required to achieve the aim of learning the content of a subject. That is supported by Eurydice Network (2006) which pointed out that in CLIL, non-language subjects are not taught in a foreign language but with and through the language.² With and through here are used instead of in to high-light that in CLIL, students are still in the process of learning both the content and the language. The description above reflects the condition in an English teacher training program in Indonesia where English is learned as a foreign language. In that program, based on the curriculum currently applied, the prominent objective is assisting students to be a professional English teacher. To attain the objective, student-teachers who join the program are facilitated and encouraged to improve their pedagogical skill such as the way they teach English to their future students and English language knowledge as a lesson that they teach to their future students. In the process, students are exposed with English sources and use the language in classroom discussion. Consequently, they endeavor to understand the materials and elevate their mastery of English. To help the students do the double focused jobs, i.e., mastering content and the target language, and to assist them to reach the objective of teaching, teachers design several classroom activities. Activities significantly affect students’ achievement and motivation in learning. It is in parallel with Kuyper, van der Werf, and Lubbers (2000) who stipulated that learning activities are a strong indicator of a student’s success. In effect, the teachers should choose or design activities for their instruction, including in CLIL contexts. The explanation above becomes a strong reason to conduct a study that focuses on CLIL classrooms in an EFL context. This research put specific attention to activities implemented in the classrooms in CLIL. Students’ responses toward those activities would also be scrutinized in this research.