On Critical Thinking and Academic Writing in EFL/ESL Contexts: A Literature Review

This study wants to gain insights into existing publications that looked into the effect of critical thinking in academic writing performance in EFL instructions in different cultural contexts. From the 2011-2021 publications in the databases of Google Scholar, ResearchGate, and ProQuest, 10 articles were reviewed to pass all the inclusion criteria. These articles show considerable homogeneity in manifesting the significance of CT to students’ writing achievement as well as writing practices to analytical, statistical, and the establishment of ethical integrity, all of which are characteristics of CT cognitive skills. Despite differences in characteristics and methodologies, all of them assert that thinking critically and writing academically can both be improved together through various strategies and methods instead of the conventional/traditional teaching, as it is no coincidence that both skills have similar roles and functions which complement each other, in which they make use of statistical and factual interpretation to generate analytical, bias-free scientific papers. Implications addressed in these studies are homogenous that universities, tutors, and syllabus-makers are expected to review the guidelines, approach, or methods that can promote students’ abilities in thinking critically and writing academically.