Many students often complain about not having the ideas to write an essay or answer questions in the speaking sections of international exams. In this workshop, I will show teachers the different principles of critical thinking, and how they can be applied to the classroom to help students achieve higher scores in international exams such as IELTS, FCE, BEC, TOEFL etc.. Adverbial phrases and 'thinking hats' are an often neglected part of the classroom. For higher scores in the IELTS and other exams, students must give fuller, more developed answers. They cannot do this, however, without using language frames and critical thinking skills in their tasks. I will give a bit of theory behind the application of critical thinking in the classroom, and add some practical ready-to-use activities to take into the classroom.

1. Developing Critical
Thinking Skills
In General English and exam preparation classes

2. What is Critical thinking?
 No single definition
 Buzzword

3. Bloom’s taxonomy
A_________
A_________
U_________
E_________
C_________

4. Bloom’s Taxonomy
Analyse
Apply
Understand
Evaluate
Create

5. Bloom’s Taxonomy -
Understand
 Where is the conversation taking place? What kind of
article is it? Where would you find it? What is the
relationship between the speakers?

6. Bloom’s Taxonomy - Apply
 Comprehension questions
 Filling in a table

7. Bloom’s Taxonomy - Analyse
 Rather than accepting an argument at face-value, students
look for how it is presented, what the main supporting
points are etc.

8. Bloom’s Taxonomy - Evaluate
 Very ‘high-order’
 Distinguish fact from opinion

9. Bloom’s Taxonomy - Create
 In exam classes, this is done for you
 Writing an essay
 Writing a review
 Creating a pamphlet

10. Why is critical thinking important in
the exam classroom?
 In IELTS, FCE, TOEFL students are expected to answer a
question give reasons, explanations and support for their
ideas in both writing and speaking.

11. Happiness is considered very
important in life. Why is it
difficult to define? What factors
are necessary for it?

12. Creating tasks
Remember
• List five things that make you happy
• Then work in groups of four. Tell the other members of the group what you have chosen.
Understand
• Compare your list of answers with the rest of the group
• Explain why the list of points make you happy
Apply
• Classify the different points your group made under different headings. For example, family and friends, free time, money, religion,
location etc..
Analyse
• Investigate the text for the section about happiness
• Identify factors given in the text that contribute to happiness
Evaluate
• Choose 2-3 factors to concentrate on in your essay
• Based on what the text suggests, prioritise the factors
Create
• Write: Money is the most important factor in achieving happiness. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

13. Task
What are the causes and
effects of environmental
problems facing
developed countries?

15. More practical ideas

16. Hyponyms
A clock, a dog, a dress, a mother,
black, a pen, bread, trousers, a bag, a
frog, red, books, a cat, rice, a man, a
baby, pink, a teenager, a hat, a t-shirt,
a banana, a book, a sheep, meat, kids,
a table, green , an elephant, sugar,
white

17. Contradictions and tautology
 A definite maybe
 An objective opinion
 An exact opposite
 A free gift
 A basic and fundamental right
 He exaggerated the situation too much

18. De Bono’s thinking hats
The Red Hat – Intuition, feeling, emotions, hunches
The White Hat – Information available and needed. Facts.
Data.
The Black Hat – Caution, difficulties, risks and weaknesses
The Yellow Hat – Benefits, value, positive aspects
The Blue Hat – Managing the thinking, summary
The Green Hat – Creativity, alternatives, possibilities

19. Increasing the cost of petrol is the best way of
solving traffic and pollution problems. To what
extent do you agree disagree? What other
measures might be effective?
“The increase in price would cause significant stress
in those already struggling financially”
Statistics show that the amount of cars on the road is increasing
year on year. However, it would be difficult to implement a
sudden price rise without providing a figure related to
affordability versus need.
“This is not an appropriate solution to the problem. It will serve to widen
the class gap and leave many people currently reliant on petrol-based
transport unemployed.

20. Increasing the cost of petrol is the best way of
solving traffic and pollution problems. To what
extent do you agree disagree? What other
measures might be effective?
“This is a positive step. The benefits of this are that fewer
people would be able to rely on petrol and would have to
seek alternative modes of transport, thus decreasing traffic”.
While carpooling and financial incentive are possible, they will
ultimately fail, as car ownership has become part of human
consciousness, and this will be almost impossible to change.
“While this is not a viable solution, the possibility of making
carpool lanes more widespread would encourage people to
share one vehicle, rather than all drive separately”

21. Practice
School buildings have no future – the
advances of the internet mean that all forms
of education and study are now able to be
done from home.
Strict punishments should be put in place
for the parents of children who commit
crimes.

22. For a positives / negatives or advantages / disadvantages essay.
This sentence gives the background to the essay, and is usually modelled on the
question. It is factual (white hat), based on the assumption that the statement from
question is a fact. This sentence often presents an initial position or opinion. It’s not as blue
blue as a conclusion though, as you need to leave room for a balanced argument. Being too
forceful here could mean that you wouldn’t be able to do this.
This is your positive topic sentence. Often this is presented as fact, so it is yellow and white.
You then support this idea with positive, yellow sentences. Often, you consider the impact
on people or general feelings and how they might be altered. This paragraph then finishes
with a concluding sentence that summarises the position from this paragraph.
This paragraph now presents the other side, so this is a negative statement. You can then
back this up with strongly negative ideas. Again, this may be supported with emotional
implications. This paragraph then finishes with a concluding sentence that summarises the
position from this paragraph.
This part now summarises the positives and negatives, so it’s black AND yellow.
You then finish with the darkest blue – your final and clearest position. Of course, your final
conclusion could be that you neither agree nor disagree.

23. A problem solution essay:
Again, you start with the background to the essay, modelled on the original question.
Present it as a factual sentence, but because it outlines a global issue, this sentence is
black AND white. Your next sentence is likely to be quite yellow, because you need to
mention that there are possible solutions to this problem. It’s NOT green though, because
you present your actual ideas in paragraph three.
This paragraph now presents the problems, so your first sentence is a negative statement.
You then need to look at future implications for these problems, so negative hypothetical
sentences go here. Again, this may be supported with emotional implications. This
paragraph then finishes with a concluding sentence that summarises the position from
this paragraph.
Your topic sentence here is effectively yellow, as it’s introducing the ideas of solutions.
You now have the chance to present possible solutions. Don’t forget to include potential
consequences of these solutions. Again, this may be supported with emotional and
human consequences. Now conclude this paragraph with a summarised position again.
Don’t forget this sentence!
Your conclusion is also different from the agree / disagree essay. Here, you need to
EVALUATE the solutions. Will they work? If so, this section is yellow and blue. If not, then
it’s black and blue. In any case, you need to make sure that you explain if you believe that
your solutions are realistic or not.

24. Perspectives
Situation: A company is deciding whether to move its manufacturing base
from the UK to India.
• We are unlikely to locate to India as it’s too far away from our main markets.
• We might move to India because the labour costs are lower.
• We might need to work in a different way to be successful in India
• It’d be a good idea because manufacturing methods are very advanced in
India.
• Economic geographical technological cultural
Underline the words that gave you your answer

25. People should move to the UK
to study English

26. Perspective
There are many different types of music in the world today. Why do we
need music? Is the traditional music of a country more important than the
international music that is heard everywhere nowadays?
Perspective
Argument
Support / Explanation

27. YOU CAN SAY
From a political perspective, the UN is arguably not very powerful.
Politically speaking, these institutions are independent
As far as geography is concerned, the UN Security council appears to cover a
lot of the globe.
CAN YOU SAY?
From a ______________perspective, capital punishment is wrong.
As far as____________is concerned, capital punishment is wrong.
_________________speaking, it is a negative thing that women now have full-time
jobs.
__________________speaking, it is a positive thing that women now have full-time
jobs.
As far as___________________is concerned, success can easily be measured.
From a __________________perspective, success cannot easily be measured.
_______________ speaking, corporal punishment, by which I mean, physically hitting
children if they are badly behaved is acceptable / wrong
With regards to_____________________, corporal punishment, by which I mean,
physically hitting children if they are badly behaved is acceptable / wrong
__________________speaking, it is a good thing that children are encouraged to
compete at school

28. In summary
 Critical thinking skills help students not only in their
language learning career, but in their studies and work too
 Critical thinking tasks can be used at all levels
 Using a modified taxonomy can help create more effective
tasks
 Using a range of critical thinking skills is most productive
 Thinking hats and perspectives can help students with the
higher-order thinking skills required in the IELTS exam

29. References
 Bloom B. S (ed). (1956) A Taxonomy of Educational
Objectives. New York: Longman
 Anderson, L.W. & Krathwohl, D.R. (Eds) (2000) A taxonomy
for learning, teaching and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s
taxonomy of educational objectives. New York: Longman
 Critical thinking in the language classroom – John Hughes
(2014)
http://www.ettoi.pl/PDF_resources/Critical_ThinkingENG.pdf
 Thinking Hats
http://www.debonothinkingsystems.com/tools/6hats.htm