The Use of Mobile Technology in Enhancing the Critical Reading Skills of Pre-University ESL Students

Abstract

Critical thinking skills are one of the most soughed after criteria for studies and work in the 21 st century, impacted by the industrial revolution that revamped the nature of the job, lifestyle and education. Critical thinking skills develop through the process of critical reading which involves the high order thinking, are lacking among the graduates, contributing to the statistic of unemployment in the nation. The past studies revealed the tertiary students’ critical reading skills do not surpass the comprehension level and need for critical reading in English text training. Critical reading skills can be instilled in the tertiary students through continuous practice. In addressing to this problem, a mobile phone application is developed as practising tool, with practice module divided into themes with different levels of difficulties. The purpose of this paper is to meet the need to enhance the critical reading skills of the pre university program students in Samarahan District, Sarawak, Malaysia via purposing the use of ReadMe mobile application as effective language practising tool. The research methodology employed the quantitative approach and data was collected via survey questionnaire with quasi experimental approach involved the administration of pretest, post test and document analysis. It was found that half of the respondents showed improvement in the critical reading competency thus enhanced their interest in reading.