Effects of an annotation-supported Socratic questioning approach on students' argumentative writing performance and critical thinking skills in flipped language classrooms

Background: Critical thinking and argumentative writing are considered complex but essential skills for learners. However, few studies have examined how instructions can be designed to optimize the development of such skills simultaneously. Contextualized in flipped language classrooms, this study aimed to develop an instructional innovation for English as a foreign language (EFL) learners.Objectives: This study investigated the effects of an annotation-supported Socratic questioning (ASSQ) approach as a flipped classroom enhancement on students' argumentative writing and critical thinking in an EFL writing course.Methods: Fifty students from two classes participated in the study, and they were randomly assigned to an experimental group and a comparison group. Following an 8-week flipped learning curriculum, the experimental group learned with the proposed ASSQ approach in the enhanced flipped classroom, while the comparison group was exposed to the traditional flipped classroom. Students' argumentative writing performance was evaluated with their argumentative essays using a researcher-developed writing rubric, and their critical thinking skills were assessed using the California Critical Thinking Skills Test.Results: Both groups significantly improved their argumentative writing, and the experimental group also significantly outperformed the comparison group after learning through the proposed approach. While the two groups had no significant difference in critical thinking skills, the within-group comparison results revealed that the experimental group made significant improvements due to the instructional intervention.Implications: The ASSQ approach could enhance the flipped classroom in regard to the teaching of argumentative writing, whereas it bears only limited impact on critical thinking. Overall, the positive effect of the proposed approach on enhancing English learners' argumentative writing performance was mainly attributed to the combined affordances of Socratic questioning and a social annotation tool to scaffold the students' thinking through verbal articulation, and to visualize their thinking with social annotations throughout the flipped learning process.