چکیده (انگلیسی):

This study examined whether language structure or language proficiency might affectstudents’ critical thinking performance. Previous research has claimed that many non-Western students struggle with the demands of demonstrating critical thought. Twolanguage-related causes have been suggested: one concerning structural limitations in thenon-Western students’ first language, and the other concerning their second language pro-ficiency. In Study 1 described here, reports written by 110 Japanese second year universitystudents, who had received instruction in academic discourse for critical evaluation (whichis one aspect of critical thinking), were analyzed for use of evaluative statements. No dis-advantage was found for use of the Japanese language, which is considered as having amore indirect structure that may make critical evaluation more difficult. Measurements oflanguage proficiency in English and Japanese, however, were found to correlate with pro-duction of evaluative statements in those respective languages suggesting that languageproficiency could affect critical evaluation use. In Study 2, the same task was given to 43first year students who had not yet received the same instruction. Analysis revealed similarpatterns in their written work but at a lower level, suggesting that the second year studentshad benefitted from the skills instruction. Furthermore, unlike the second year students,the first year students evidenced no correlations between their language proficiency scoresand their production of evaluative statements, suggesting that proficiency on its own isinadequate: students need instruction on the specific language forms and structures to useto demonstrate critical thinking in their written work.