Andrew G. Drybrough
One of the key features of higher education is the requirement to teach students how to be more critical in their academic reading and writing. Such requirements have been embedded in national qualification frameworks and graduate attributes of many HEIs. In the UK, international students are more strongly represented proportionally at the master’s full-time PGT level. However, there is little research on international PGT students’ perceptions of how to effectively teach critical thinking at this level. This paper presents findings from interviews with 12 PGT international master’s students and from a pre-sessional EAP post-course feedback survey of 502 students in a UK HEI. It highlights the role of EAP courses in developing PGT students’ critical thinking skills as part of a wider and ‘mixed’ approach. It also provides examples of practice in a pre-sessional EAP course to illustrate how this type of course can form a key role in developing critical thinking among PGT international students.
