Developing Critical Thinking through Practical Criticism

Teaching English through literature at the undergraduate level in India is assumed to have two major goals: 1) to develop students’ proficiency in the language and 2) to help them appreciate the “beauty of literature”. In recent

time, the goal of developing higher order thinking skills (HOTS) or critical thinking (CT) has also been added However, these lofty aims remain nebulous concepts, unrealized in practice.The usual “explain and extol” method of line-by-line explanations of the prescribed poems and stories, interspersed with a “discussion”of “examination-type” questions and rhapsodies over the “beauty” of some poetic lines does not adequately address any of the three avowed goals. Targeted and sustained practice in the areas of grammar and vocabulary is still required to develop language proficiency. Exclamations about evocative writing in fact reinforce the notion of subjectivity, rather than a reasoned, objective analysis that would reveal the writer’s craft. Further, the questions commonly asked by teachers mainly address the skills of comprehension, recall and understanding of the students. Their higher order thinking skills application,analysis, evaluation-are hardly touched upon.