Critical reading skills at tertiary level

Abstract

This study investigated critical reading skills among tertiary level students. Ten undergraduate students from the Faculty of Science, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) participated in this research. They were required to read a text regarding an oil crisis and respond to a question given in a form of a written protocol. A Critical Reading Categorization Scheme, adapted from the strategy profile developed by Sugirin’s (1999) was used to analyse the written protocol data. It was found that a number of sub-skills were used by the students, among them which were consistently used include extracting information from reading text, using examples to support argument, stating opinion regarding the topic discussed, stating personal viewpoint on the issue discussed and providing explanations for opinion stated. Overall, the results showed that the students were able to moderately respond critically to the text they read.