ENHANCING CRITICAL THINKING WHILE TEACHING ENGLISH AT UNIVERSITY
The article considers the principles of effective thinking development within the university course «English as a Second Language». It is proposed to use the interdisciplinary nature of this subject in its three main varieties (General English, English for Academic Purposes, and English for Specific Purposes). The article traces the development of the concept of critical thinking from its emergence in the works of American researchers of the 20th century to the latest scientific articles and textbooks from the world’s leading publishing houses. The article notes the particular relevance of this concept in the current conditions of high volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity and within the idea of lifelong learning. Critical thinking allows taking the right decisions and working effectively on different tasks, including searching for, assessing the reliability, analyzing and systematizing large amounts of information. According to the Federal State Educational Standards for Higher Education, systemic and critical thinking is considered one of the universal competencies based on which professional competencies are built. Critical thinking development is recognized as an essential task of the educational process. We consider the reasons why critical thinking can be «turned off», and the possibility of improving this mode of thinking with the help of the brainstorming method is emphasized. This method allows one to generate many ideas quickly to find an effective solution. The three stages of brainstorming (formulation of the problem, generation of ideas, evaluation, and selection of ideas) are discussed. The focus is on the ideas generation stage using three techniques: «free association», «question-answer», and «visual thinking».