Vilma Kardauskė, Danutė Belazarienė

Developing Critical Thinking Skills in Writing Summaries in English

Developing Critical Thinking Skills in Writing Summaries in English

Vilma Kardauskė

Vilniaus kolegija

Danutė Belazarienė

Vilniaus kolegija

Critical thinking is essential for contemporary societies in the context of the enormous amount of information and evolving technologies. Students' critical thinking is influenced by numerous factors including digitalization, generation peculiarities, and usage of AI. All this encourages educators to look for new ways and solutions in the development of students' critical thinking skills. Summary writing relates very closely to the ability of the students to use critical thinking. It is necessary that students deeply engage with the text to comprehend, analyze, select and take reasoned judgement to identify the main idea and then support it with relevant arguments. Critical thinking skills will help the students to prioritize correctly discarding irrelevant details while conveying the gist of the article. This study attempts to explore the strategies that would be effective in enhancing students' critical thinking skills to develop recommendations for teaching summary writing in English. The answers to a questionnaire on critical thinking in summary writing might lead to an instruction scheme that would make summary writing easier with critical thinking on the mind. This research could be a meaningful insight for further exploration of effective methods when learning to write summaries in English. 

Keywords: summary writing, critical thinking 

Danutė Belazarienė is a lecturer of Business English at the Business Management Faculty of Vilniaus kolegija/ Higher Education Institution. She graduated from Vilnius University and qualified as a philologist and teacher of the English language. She taught English in a secondary school, in a statutory institution of Lithuania and a higher education institution. D. Belazarienė actively participates in applied research activities, and acts as a translator of internal normative acts and informative messages for publicizing institutional events, lectures at higher education institutions abroad. Her research area is the development of students' critical thinking skills. 

Vilma Kardauskė is a lecturer of Business English and Head of the Advertising and Communication Department at the Business Management Faculty of Vilniaus kolegija/ Higher Education Institution. She possesses master's degrees in English philology and Law and has a demonstrated history of working in education, skilled in international projects, and translation and with a strong interest in the area of communication. V. Kardauskė has also been active on a multinational scale, as a participant and organiser of multiple events in the field of education.