A Study of Thaksin University the Third-Year English-Major Students’ Critical Reading Ability
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the critical reading ability of the third-year English-major students, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of Thaksin University, Songkhla.
The sample of the study was 40 third-year English-major students in the second semester of 1999 academic year who took EN 322 Critical Reading Course in the first semester of 1999 academic year. The instrument for the study was a 60-item critical reading test, investigating five subskills in reading critically. The data were analyzed for percentage, mean, and standard deviation.
The data analysis indicated that the average score of the students’ critical reading ability was 51.46%. Based on subskills, the highest score obtained by students was from the skill of differentiating between facts and opinions (84.25%), followed by reading for main ideas (51.75%), reading for understanding figurative language (51.00%), reading for drawing conclusions and recognizing cause-effect relations (43.00%), and reading for making inferences (39.38%) respectively.
The results revealed that as a whole, the level of students’ critical reading ability did not reach the 75% criterion. For individual skills, the level of students’ critical reading ability in four subskills did not reach the 75% criterion.
Keyword: Critical reading ability, differentiating between facts and epinions,reading for main ideas, reading for drawing conclusions, and recognizing cause-effect,relations,reading for making inferences, reading for understanding figurative language
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