The Use of Authentic Materials Toward Students’ Critical Thinking Skill Iis Sulyaningsih

Table 2 Students’ Thinking Skill Stages 
The table indicates that most students have had basic skills for reading 
critically, which are knowledge and comprehension. They are able to identify the central 
idea of the article and the primary questions of authors that is answered in the text. They 
understand what the text says but they have not got what behind the text as the critical 
readers should do. Some of them have achieved application and analytical thinking 
skill stages which they can relate their understanding from the text with their 
background knowledge and experiences.
Specifically, this study was identifying and analyzing data concerning students’ 
skills in four criteria. Those four criteria are: 
1. knowing/understanding issue disclosed by writer within the text 
2. understanding the objective why the text is written 
3. recognizing evidence and utterances supporting delivery of issue 
4. delivering argument, either written or spoken, regarding the issue disclosed 
within text. 
1. The skill of knowing/ Understanding Issue of a(n) Text/Article 
The issue of article is the primary question the author asks and goes on to 
answer (Reichenbach, 2001). To acknowledge the issue is a bit difficult since it is not 
explicitly written in the text so that the students must read think it more. The question 
proposed to see students’ ability in identifying the topic and the issue of the text is: what 
is the author trying to tell us about? and what does the authors try to answer? The 
analysis of the data discovers that most students have obtained their ability of knowing 
the topic and some of others can show their understanding on issue of the text. This 
implies that they are potentially able to think critically. However, this thinking ability is 
still in the basic skill to be critical in reading.
No. Data 
Thinking Skill Stages