Mandani Zarei - Shahrekord University, Iran

This study investigates the effect of critical thinking way of teaching, such as the questioning, group discussion and debate, and writing reflective journal strategies and social relationships of post method condition on the performance of Junior high school learners' reading. To conduct the present study in Grade ۹ in junior high school, ۷۵ students out of ۱۲۰ students divided into ۲ experimental groups (i.e., Groups A and B) and one control group (i.e., Group C). Groups A and B made use of separate treatments, in which one of post method strategies (i.e., social relationships) was required to be taught to Group B and the critical thinking procedures were taught to Group A, whereas Group C lacked such treatments lasted for ۱۰ weeks. After administrating the posttests for both experimental and control groups, the mean scores of the experimental groups and those of the control group were compared through a one-way ANCOVA. The data analysis revealed that teaching by the use of post method condition and critical-based instruction led to significantly better performance of the participants (p < .۰۵). Also, after collecting the results of the questionnaire regarding reading strategies like scanning, skimming, the usual order of the sentence, and background knowledge, they showed that each experimental group made use of certain reading strategies in concordance with required criteria used in the classroom. Consequently, the participant's tendencies toward certain reading strategies were required to be taken into account.

Critical Thinking, Post Method Condition, Reading Skill, Reading Strategies Questionnaire