On Shifting the Narrative Point of View and Critical Thinking in Written Narratives by Iranian Learners: A Step towards Critical EAP

This study investigated the quantitative and qualitative impacts of shifting the narrative point of view on the representation of critical thinking (CT) in Iranian EAP learners’ written narratives. Sixty (30 women and 30 men) students of psychology who were selected based on convenience sampling were randomly divided into two equal experimental groups of the first-person group (FPG), and third-person summary group (TPSG). The researchers initially administered Watson-Glaser critical thinking appraisal-form A questionnaire (Watson & Glaser, 1980). The results of the independent samples t-test showed no statistically significant difference between the CT of the groups. Then the participants were given the short story of Butterflies (Grace, 1987). The TPSG participants inscribed their reflections on the story in narratives from the third-person perspective, whereas the FPG participants shifted the point of view and wrote first-person stories. The content analysis of the first- and third-person data based on Hatton and Smith’s (1995) taxonomy of writing types illustrated a statistically significant difference between the length and the number of descriptive writing and dialogical reflection clauses in first-person stories versus the number of the same clauses in third-person narratives. However, there was no statistically significant difference between the groups’ mean ranks of descriptive reflection and critical reflection clauses. Based on Bakhtin (1981, 1986), the dialogicality principle of both first- and third-person storylines was shown to be more descriptive, less descriptive reflective, less and less dialogic reflective, and still less critical reflective. The qualitative analysis confirmed that the writings demonstrated a heteroglossia of different writing types.