The Effect of Making Thinking Visible Approach on The Critical Writing And Anxiety Levels of Preparatory School Students

Abstract

This study investigates the impact of English instruction enriched with Making Thinking Visible approach—implemented through Visible Thinking Routines on English as a Foreign Language preparatory school students’ critical writing skills and their foreign language anxiety levels. This research was designed as a quasi-experimental pre-test-post-test study with experimental and control groups, and two English as a foreign language preparatory classes were included in the study. The experimental group received English as a Foreign Language instruction enriched with Making Thinking Visible approach, while the control group followed a traditional curriculum. Data were collected using the High School Writing Skills Task and Rubric, the Critical Writing Skills Task and Rubric, and the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale. Statistical analyses, including a 2x2 mixed-design ANOVA, revealed that students in the experimental group exhibited significantly greater improvements in critical writing skills compared to their counterparts in the control group. Moreover, the experimental group experienced a statistically significant reduction in foreign language anxiety, whereas the control group did not demonstrate a statistically significant change. The findings suggest that making thinking visible supports both cognitive development and the reduction of language-related anxiety, offering a promising instructional strategy for improving critical writing outcomes in English as a Foreign Language context. The study contributes to the literature on metacognitive pedagogies and provides actionable implications for curriculum design in preparatory English programs.