Prof David O. Fakeye & Dr Adebimpe Olubunmi Adebanjo
Abstract
This study was carried out to examine curriculum content adequacy and lecturer feedback strategies as predictors of critical thinking in essay writing among English Language pre-service teachers in colleges of education in Southwestern Nigeria. Correlation design was adopted. Multistage sampling method was used in the study. Seven colleges of education that had English language pre-service teachers at the time of the study were enumerated; eighteen lecturers handling General English in year two across the seven colleges were enumerated. Seven intact classes of year two English language pre-service teachers, with a total of 585 pre-service teachers were purposively selected. Two research questions were answered and two hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The instruments used were Curriculum Content Adequacy Rating (r = 0.89), Lecturer Feedback Strategies Rating (r = 0.90), and Critical Thinking in Essay Writing (r = 0.76) scales. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics and Pearson Product Moment Correlation. Curriculum content was adequate with = 3.72 at threshold of 2.50 while written feedback strategy was mostly used by lecturers. It was recommended that General English lecturers in colleges of education should employ various feedback strategies to improve critical thinking of English Language pre-service teachers in essay writing.