CULTIVATING HIGHER-ORDER THINKING SKILLS IN ENGLISH-AS-A-FOREIGN LANGUAGE TECHNICAL READING INSTRUCTION

“The need to develop critical thinking has never been so vital,” said in the 2019 report of World Economy Forum. Additionally, several recent surveys of managers also showed that critical thinking is the number one soft skill that managers feel new graduates are lacking and that education systems have done little to help address the skills shortage. With higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) being ranked among the most in-demand skills for job candidates, engineering education should catch up with the global trend with pedagogical innovation to provide training for cultivating students’ HOTS. Although critical thinking has already been listed in the CDIO syllabus under the category of Personal and Professional Skills and Attributes, how to implement HOTS effectively in instruction for engineering students still needs further elaboration. This paper aims at proposing how to cultivate engineering students’ higher-order thinking skills in English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) technical reading instruction and at understanding students’ responses to the HOTS implementation. Along with the proposed design of HOTS-based activities, students’ awareness, adaptation, and perceived impacts of HOTS are also presented.