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I am an EFL teacher at the UzSWLU for more than twenty years. During these years I have been teaching Reading, Writing, Speaking, Listening, Vocabulary, Discourse Analysis and Methods of teaching and learning. I have also been working at the Professional Development Teacher Training Courses as a teacher trainer. I developed my proficiency at Teacher Training Courses in NILE, UK in 2013 and completed a ten-week online course of ESP teaching at the Oregon University in USA in 2015.

Currently I am teaching TAA(Discourse and Vocabulary)for the second year students at the Uzbek State University of World Languages

My students are the second year learners of higher education at the age of eighteen or twenty with B2 or C1 levels. I am teaching TAA(Vocabulary and Discourse for them only this semester)

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Actually I have already been teaching Discourse Analysis for more than ten years and there is a little problem for the teachers: it is a big question even the name of the subject, what it may mean, what it teaches and it mostly frightens both the novice teachers and the learners. It is something new for them which they have never dealt with. So after the first lesson a lot questions appear and it will be more challenging for them to get aware of the materials and the activities used in class. In the first class I will introduce them what the subject is, the differences between Written and Spoken discourse and etc. But while completing the tasks I have found that my learners lack using their critical thinking abilities which is really important in learning and teaching Discourse Analysis. By observing my learners' behaviour I have learned that my learners are not able to use their critical thinking abilities. I'd like them to put their higher-order level skills into practice and go deeper while fulfilling the activities. They are mostly aware of remembering, understanding and applying into practice what they have learned however my aim is to develop their higher-order critical thinking skills such as analysing, evaluating and creating.

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Doubts or questions you have about your students and their learning:

a) Why is that my students do not use critical thinking?

b) I am unsure about that my students are able to analyze written and spoken texts beyond the gràmmar?

Exploring my perception:

1.  What is Critical Thinking for me?

2. Why should I develop my students' CT?

3. How do I know that the students are not developing their CT?

Exploring others' percerption:

1. What is Critical thinking for my students?

2. What do my students find difficult in developing CT?

Exploring behavior:

1. Which tasks are more effective for them to use their critical thinking(open ended questions, photos, videos or texts)

2. What interaction patterns are more effective in developing their CT?

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Write the summaries of your analysed data

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Write the summaries of your analysed data

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For collecting my initial data, I asked a colleague to observe my classes (one where they had to work individually, collaboratively and in groups) and to write down the behaviour of the students during the class and also the quality of my Discourse Analysis tasks if they push the learners to switch their critical thinking while performing the tasks or not. Of course, in order to provide a better observation, I also considered my experience as an English teacher and the regular behaviour of my students. In addition to that I video-recorded a full class in order to obtain some information by myself. As for the data collected I had my written reflection, questionnaire from my three groups of students (about 16 students in each group).

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So what did I find? Here are some findings from my questionnaire

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So what did I find? Here are some findings from my questionnaire

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According to this questionnaire applying theory to real texts and identifying discourse features are really the most challenging for my students, as well as discourse genres they found difficult to deal with but a few of my learners think that form and function is not also easy.

As we see below, I had some further useful questions on my questionnaire, of another kind:

1. What specific aspects of the tasks do you enjoy or find challenging? Please explain.

Most of my students found debates, role plays, videos related to the topic useful, however most of them found authentic texts, newspaper articles more challenging to analyze. What's more to guess writer's intended meaning in texts and to interpret the hidden meaning of certain expressions are also difficult to deal with.

2. Can you provide examples of situations where critical thinking has been beneficial for you in daily life?

Most of my students wrote that by critically assessing the sources, checking facts, and looking for biases, they avoid believing or spreading misinformation.

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My colleague has also observed my classes and gave me this feedback for improvement:

She told me even if the tasks are designed properly the aim was not achieved by the teacher only in the first activity, for example in group discussion not all the students were actively involved in the process which resulted negatively to the next activity because one of the student of each group has to write the conversational features in spoken language(adjacency pairs, turn taking strategy, fillers, discourse markers, repairs or others used in their speech) and fill in the form given by the teacher. After the observer students should report back what they have observed.

However in the second activity it was listening task all the students were able to identify all the features of spoken discourse individually. It means they realized the new topic which was the main aim put by the teacher.

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According to the given feedback I did these changes:

1) forward the discussion topics to the students via telegram beforehand by asking them to get ready for it properly at home

2) to arrange the places of my learners easy to work collaboratively, say face to face or in a circle arrangement

3) to organize the groups of mixed level learners be in one group to let them to support each others

4) to find the exact topics according their level, interest and age for example the topic about arranging wedding parties without much spending money was really interesting for them to discuss

3. After collecting data I decided to reflect on my teaching and plan to design tasks that improve my learners critical thinking abilities such as:

Debates and arguments

Role play scenarios

Group discussions

Open ended questions after watching videos like Ted talk or others

Problem solving activities

Critical reading materials and analysing them

Case studies related to the syllabus topics