Higher order thinking skills and language learning: Presenting a model for incorporating creativity and critical thinking into classroom activities and language tasks

The education literature often extols the importance of skills that can be transferred to other fields of study or that can assist students for life-long learning and career development (Assiter, 1995; Fallows & Steven, 2013). Higher order thinking such as creativity and critical thinking are one particular area of these generic or transferrable skills. Especially in educational settings where language classes are positioned within general education or foundation studies, there could even be an institutional requirement that these skills be included within the curriculum. Because of this, teachers may wish to incorporate higher order thinking skills as a basis for language tasks; however, there seems to be little literature on exactly how teachers can achieve this. In this article, I will present a model for incorporating higher order thinking skills into language classrooms, provide some examples based on the first portion of the model, and exemplify how this model can be adapted to suit a task-based language teaching approach.