Fostering tertiary EFL students’ critical thinking through literary criticism: A students’ perception study
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.28918/erudita.v6i1.14670Abstract
Purpose — This study investigates tertiary EFL students’ perceptions of a modern literary criticism course and examines how engaging with critical theories influences their critical thinking dispositions.
Design/methodology/approach — This study adopted the mixed-method approach. The 47 participants of this study were students from the Literary Criticism of English study in a private university in Tangerang, Banten, Indonesia, consisting of 32 female students and 15 males.
Findings — The findings indicate that undergraduate students did not view the conceptual complexity of literary texts or their English proficiency as primary barriers to comprehension. They believe that digital reading fatigue and sustained deep reading posed the main challenges. Integrating multimodal materials, such as film adaptations alongside textual analysis, significantly enhanced textual engagement and comprehension. Crucially, students perceived that applying literary criticism to socially and personally relevant texts promoted higher-order thinking, self-reflection, and critical evaluation of life values.
Originality/value — This study offers empirical evidence on the pedagogical intersection between literary theory and critical thinking among Generation Z undergraduates in an Indonesian higher education context. This research also reveals the cognitive and multimodal learning preferences of modern digital natives, providing actionable insights for designing literature curricula that cultivate critical reasoning.
Keywords:
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