Investigating EFL writers’ critical thinking performance across languages

Understanding how writing in different languages affects one's critical thinking (CT) performance is of high importance for both the teaching and assessment of CT. Previous research has identified a close connection between CT and writing as well as the effectiveness of evaluating CT through the proxy of writing (e.g., Bean, 2011; Dong, 2017, 2018; Rahmat, 2020); however, little is known about whether and how one's CT performance varies when writing in different languages. This mixed-methods study was designed to fill this gap by comparing 31 Chinese English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) students’ CT scores, determined through evaluation of their essays written in English and Chinese. The results showed that the participants demonstrated significantly better CT abilities when they wrote in their L1 (t = 8.105, p < 0.01); however, there was no significant correlation between students’ L1 CT and L2 CT scores. In addition, the study identified a number of factors that significantly influenced students’ decision-making in their L1 and L2 writing processes and affected their CT performance in aspects such as clarity, precision, breadth, depth, and relevance. This study contributes to a dynamic conceptualization of EFL writers’ CT performance across languages and highlights the need to recognize the differences between multilingual students’ CT abilities and CT performance. The study also provides practical implications for the teaching and assessment of CT in multilingual contexts.