STUDENTS’ CONCEPTUALIZATION ON CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS IN THEIR RESEARCH PROPOSAL AND FINAL PROJECT
The critical thinking skills of students are relatively low; this has implications for the low academic writing skills that are mastered by English foreign language (EFL) students. This study aims to describe in detail the ability to conceptualize critical thinking in relation to academic writing skills. The method used in this research is qualitative with a phenomenological approach. By employing qualitative research methods with the instruments of observation and interviews, this study scrutinized the existence of critical thinking skills performed by the students in their scientific writing, the conceptualization of critical thinking skills, and the difference between their conceptualization and practices. Through document observations and semi-structured interviews, this study found that the ability to prepare proposals and final prefects for EFL students in Indonesia is still low, this is due to the low ability to think critically. The low critical skill is caused by the low literacy possessed by students both from reading books, the internet, triplets and their weakness in relating the aspects being discussed.
critical thinking, academic writing, research proposal, final project.