English Language Learners: Article Analysis

The Socratic Method of teaching is named as such after its moniker, Socrates, and is styled according to his teachings of eliciting critical thinking skills through questioning and open dialogue. This article focuses on this method as a way to teach critical thinking skills not only to native speakers, but just as importantly, to English Language Learners. Since acquisition is often at the forefront of teaching ELLs, this important critical thinking skill can be overlooked if not directly considered. The article discusses both Socratic Questioning, often teacher-led, as well as Socratic Seminar, often student-led, and how both of these approaches hold value within the ELL classroom. Jensen defines Critical Thinking Skills as, “specific higher level thinking skills as compiled and described by Peter Facione (Facione, 1990.)” (4) He provides a holistic scoring rubric that is used in order to assess the growth of critical thinking skills and postulates the question: “Is the Socratic Method an effective teaching and assessment strategy to develop critical thinking for ELLs?” (12) The findings indicate that the Socratic Method is, in fact, an effective means of developing critical thinking skills in
The article makes no mention of specific teacher led grammar lessons, but rather focuses on pushing students to consider thought-provoking topics individually and collectively in order to reach the higher order thinking, which is the ultimate goal. With the critical thinking goals of interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation, and self-regulation at the crux of Socratic Methods, it makes sense that students will need language in order to grow in each of these realms. Again, the Output Hypothesis is at work here. Students are working together to focus on form as they delve deeper into relevant