The introduction of critical thinking into education has recently become a global aim. The implementation of critical thinking as language pedagogy in the field of English as a Foreign Language (hereafter EFL) has started recently, and it consequently requires further investigation. Despite Atkinson’s (1997) claims that critical thinking is a Western concept and could not be applied for foreign language education in non-Western contexts, findings from research reveal that critical thinking pedagogies have been effective for developing language learning in non-Western contexts. Despite this evidence of success in implementing critical thinking as one element of EFL pedagogy, the number of existing studies is limited, and most of these studies have focused on the development of learners’ reading and writing skills. The present study is a naturalistic inquiry that examines the processes of implementing a critical thinking pedagogy for developing the quality of classroom dialogue. The specific focus is on whether this pedagogy increases/decreases learners’ involvement in high quality talk, characterised by the complex use of language and the application of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS). The merits of and challenges to applying this pedagogy for developing the quality of dialogue were identified through regular interviews with participants, audio recordings of classroom talk, observational field notes, pre- and post-tests for measuring language complexity and questionnaires. The study was carried out over 12 weeks at a language institute run by a private university in Saudi Arabia. Participants were an EFL teacher and 18 high school graduates taking a compulsory language course at this institute before starting their undergraduate degrees. The findings suggest that this pedagogy was more challenging for the teacher than for the learners, and this was due to the effects of power relations found in the Saudi educational system. In Saudi universities, educational policies, plans and decisions are limited to the Council of HE and the MOHE. With regard to university governance at the internal level, decisions are mainly made by male authorities who govern both male and female universities. Teachers cannot implement classroom interventions without authorities’ permission. This indicates that power is not shared equally between university authorities on one side and their staff and students on the other side, more specifically female staff and students. The teacher’s feeling of powerlessness in this study has led to unsatisfactory outcomes. Her classroom practice was affected by her inability to have an access to power. This was more evident towards the end of the study, when classroom talk had regressed from dialogue to a more traditional Initiative/Response/ Feedback (IRF) exchange structure. The teacher dominated talk to minimise opportunities for criticising social issues or talking about issues that were not in tune with the students’ culture. Although the teacher’s use of language and interaction did seem to have some negative effects on the development of learners’ language complexity in dialogue, there were some examples where the thinking lessons provided learners with opportunities for thinking and learning through dialogue, more specifically when using mysteries. The learners valued these opportunities to think and seemed to be tolerant of ambiguity. The main contribution of this study is a framework for infusing critical thinking pedagogy across courses in EFL skills that are taught to post-secondary school learners in Saudi Arabia. The framework is informed by Burden and Williams’ (1996) SPARE model, Moore’s Transdisciplinarity framework (2011) and my own reflections on the context. Another contribution is that the study brings together two language learning theories: the socio-cultural theory and the critical language awareness theory. In other words, the study explains that learners’ cognitive and metacognitive skills, highlighted in the critical language awareness theory, plays a significant role in engaging learners in successful interaction, through creating participation opportunities based on the notion of critical thinking. This point is evident in participants’ discussions of Turkish Series and Mystery 4 in Chapter 6, which reflected high level of interaction and criticality employed by learners. The study is likely to be of benefit to teachers, researchers and policy makers in the Saudi context and other contexts that are concerned with the application of critical thinking for developing language teaching and learning.

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The present study is an investigation of the composing processes and writing strategies of fourth year Libyan university students majoring in English as a foreign language. The study predominantly adopts a qualitative approach, using a number of research methods, namely think-aloud protocols, semi-structured interviews, and observations. The student participants involved in the investigation belonged to two groups: good writers (N=5), and poor writers (N=6). The teacher informants (N=3) are among those who teach composition classes to students in the English department, and have long experience in teaching in the university stage of education. The composing sessions were audio-taped, transcribed and coded for analysis, along with the drafts and the final written compositions. The think-aloud sessions were followed by semi-structured interviews that were conducted with both students and teachers. The research was guided by three questions: (1) What strategies do Libyan students of English as a foreign language use while writing in English? (2) Do proficient and less proficient writers differ in their strategy use? (3) If yes, how and why do they differ? Analysis of the data collected from think-aloud protocols revealed that the subjects made use of various strategies, and sub-strategies while composing. The good writers‘ use of strategies differed from the poor writers‘ in terms of frequency and quality, and there seems to be a variation in recursiveness in subjects‘ writing process in relation to their writing proficiency and language competence. Moreover, findings showed that implementation of think-aloud instructions varied between the two groups – thinking aloud and writing in English at the same time appeared to be a problematic task for the poor writers and consequently this may have affected their strategy use in terms of frequency and kind. Also, analysis of data gathered from the semi-structured interviews with both students and teachers showed that the subjects‘ writing development was affected by a number of factors. These factors were connected to the subjects‘ language proficiency level, their motivation, and their past learning experience. The students‘ level of language proficiency appeared to affect their writing behaviour, particularly in their planning, scanning and use of L1 strategies. Subjects‘ motivation differed between the two groups. The good writers showed more enthusiasm and interest in practising and developing their writing skills influenced by the positive instruction they received in writing during the secondary stage of education and also by their desire to get a job they were interested in after graduation. In contrast, there was a lack of motivation on the part of the poor writers as a consequence of previous learning experience at the secondary stage of education, and also their view about the unimportance of writing for them upon graduation. The other factor was related to the students‘ past learning experience and their reading habits. The different instructional approaches students were exposed to at the secondary school stage influenced their writing behaviour. The reading habits of subjects in both groups also appeared to affect their writing skills. The good writers who read a lot in secondary school and had continued to do so in college appeared to have less difficulty in expressing their ideas in writing than the other poor writers. Therefore, one major finding of this work is that the writing process investigated has to be seen in context. Factors such as L2 proficiency, motivation and past learning experience have a significant bearing on writing in L2 and have to be taken into account when studying the composing process as well as the final written product. A tentative composing process model, based on the students‘ writing processes and strategies observed, is proposed with respect to the aforementioned factors which appeared to be responsible for the differences in strategy use between the two groups of participants. Suggestions for further research, and implications for EFL, particularly for Libyan university students, are also provided.

Although phoneme perception and production in second-language (L2) learners has been the focus of much research over the past few decades, the learning mechanisms and the factors that influence them are still far from understood. The purpose of this PhD research is to cast some light on the mechanisms underlying the learning of L2 phonemes and the effects of age. Japanese speakers who have problems in perception and production of the English /r/-/l/ contrast participated in three perceptual training studies. The first study examined whether Japanese adults can improve their perception and production with identification and discrimination training. The results demonstrated that both identification and discrimination training methods improved their perception and production of the English /r/-/l/ contrast, but the combination of two different training methods did not have additive effects. The second study investigated how age affects the learning of the English /r/-/l/ contrast at phonetic and phonological levels of perception. The results demonstrated that Japanese adults are disadvantaged in improving their phonetic perception of the English /r/-/l/ contrast due to their relatively fossilised brain plasticity and their developed L1 phonetic units. On the other hand, younger learners are able to improve both phonetic and phonological perception of the contrast. This may be attributed to their greater brain plasticity and less interference from undeveloped L1 phonetic categories. Finally, the third study examined how Japanese speakers improve production of English /r/ and /l/ through perceptual training, and found that perceptual training transferred to production ability in both identifiability and acoustic realisations. The improvement in production seemed to be attributable to perceptual learning. There may be a common underlying ability for perception and production, although the acoustic dimensions which link the two may be different between individuals. The theoretical implications for understanding learning mechanisms and age effects are discussed.