The Role Of Intertextuality Of Print Text And Visual Text To Promote Critical Thinking Among ESL Learners: A Comparative Study

One of the major concerns in the ESL classroom is the lack of critical responses of the ESL learners. This brings a gap in the knowledge and language acquisition in the ESL classroom. This study is carried out to see if the use of intertextuality of print (a short story) and visual (a movie) text is able to assist ESL learners in generating Critical Thinking. A study was carried out with 40 ESL students of Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia, where the experimental group was exposed to both the print and visual text, while the control group was exposed to just the print text. The Bloom's Taxonomy of Higher Thinking Model was used to analyze the critical thinking ability of both the experimental and the control group. To triangulate the findings, the experimental group was required to answer a set of questionnaire. This study was able to highlight the potentials of intertextuality to affect the students both at their intellectual and personal levels as to prompt the desired critical responses and to later initiate critical analyses and reflections. The finding also showed that the experifnental group has positive perspectives regarding the use of intertextuality in ESL classroom.