Critical and Creative Thinking in Malay-language Essay-writing Through an Online Authentic Learning Environment

Abstract

Chinese school students’ Malay-language essays are unsatisfactory as the students are rarely exposed to an authentic environment. Furthermore, there is less emphasis on learning critical and creative Malay-language essay-writing. Current web technological development enables the design of a real situational learning environment to cultivate the critical and creative use of Malay as a second language in Chinese school students’ essay-writing skills. Authentic world situations can be represented by web technology. Thus, this study examined the role of an online authentic learning environment in promoting critical and creative thinking for Malay-language essay-writing among Chinese school students. In this pre-experimental study, the sample consisted of 33 government Chinese secondary school students. The Friedman and Wilcoxon signed rank test analysis results of the students’ critical and creative thinking skills were both significant (p < 0.05). The web technology-aided authentic learning strategies improved the students’ critical and creative thinking skills, which supported their achievement scores in writing critical and creative Malay-language essays.