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Abstract
One of the educational trends which has been much discussed and suggested nowadays is Critical Thinking. Therefore, extensive discussion has taken place over the techniques and procedures which can provide an opportunity for promoting critical thinking as an essential part of English language teaching and learning. One of the most effective suggested techniques for flourishing critical thinking in the English classes is journal keeping which has progressively gained popularity in EFL and ESL settings. Accordingly, attempts were made to shed light on written dialog journal’s employment effect on EFL learners’ critical thinking development. Moreover, the study investigates the influence of written dialog journal implementation on five subsections of critical thinking. Participants in this study were 30 Iranian ale advanced EFL learners. The Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal -Form A (Watson &Glaser, 1980) was administered at the beginning of the semester as a pretest. The total number of items included in this questionnaire was 80 divided into 5 subsections. Subsequently, the participants in experimental group were asked to keep written dialogue journals in each class. However, the control group did their ordinary writing tasks. At the end of the semester a post-test was distributed. The study’s findings seem to indicate that there is significant difference between the experimental group and the comparison group giving evidence that clearly teaching critical thinking abilities through keeping dialogue journals improves EFL learners’ critical thinking skills as opposed to using ordinary English writing tasks. Moreover, the study findings suggest that written dialog journal employment has significant effect on inference, recognition of assumption and evaluation of argument which are 3 subsections of critical thinking. On the other hand, the study shows keeping written dialog journal does not have a significant effect on deduction and interpretation, the next 2 subsections of critical thinking. The findings of this study provide insight into an effective technique, written dialog journal, in enhancing learners’ critical thinking and present suggestions for further research.