Introduction. The development of critical reading skills in English remains one of the main objectives of higher education in today’s globalised world. This skill is necessary for comprehensive analysis of information, decision-making and development of critical thinking. However, the critical reading skills level can vary depending on the academic background of students.
The aim of this article is to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching critical reading to students majoring in philology and economics, to identify key differences, and to assess the impact of different teaching formats on the development of this skill.
Materials and methods. The survey involved 120 respondents (N=120) evenly distributed between philology students (n=60) and economics students (n=60) in their second to fourth years at the Financial University. The stratified selection method was used, with regard to the year of training and the students’ specialisation, to ensure the representativeness of the data. The assessment structure included specialised critical reading assignments based on authentic English texts from verified sources, supplemented by a comprehensive multi-component evaluation system. Data analysis was performed using the SPSS 25 statistical package, the Mann-Whitney U-test, the Wilcoxon’s test, the Spearman’s rank correlation analysis, the chi-square test, and the content analysis.
Results. The study revealed that students majoring in philology showed higher results in reading speed (p = 0.003) and literacy (p < 0.001); however, no differences were found between the groups in terms of analytical depth, identification of arguments, and formulation of positions (p > 0.05). Independent learning proved to be more effective than classroom instruction in all critical reading indicators (p < 0.01). Correlation analysis showed a negative relationship between reading speed and literacy (r = -0.32; p < 0.05) and a positive relationship between depth of analysis, finding arguments, and formulation of position (r > 0.5; p < 0.01). Content analysis of students’ responses showed that philology students tended to analyse text structure significantly more often (75%) than economics students (53.3%). At the same time, economics students more often showed critical assessment of the reliability of sources (58.3%), although the difference did not reach the statistical significance level (p = 0.202). These differences highlight the impact of professional training on priority strategies for critical reading in English.
Conclusion. The obtained results emphasise the need for a differentiated approach to the development of critical reading skills in students of different academic disciplines. In addition, the revealed advantage of independent learning in terms of the development of critical reading confirms the need to increase its share in educational programmes. Further research is needed to develop and optimise effective teaching methods aimed at improving critical thinking skills when working with texts in a foreign language in various academic fields.
Keywords: critical reading, critical analysis, foreign language teaching, reading comprehension, academic literacy
For Citation: Klimova, I. I., Arutyunian, V. S., Tretyakova, G. V., & Ginzburg, O. V. (2025). Development of critical reading skills in English: a comparative analysis of the effectiveness of teaching philology and economics students. Perspektivy nauki i obrazovania = Perspectives of Science and Education, (5), 355–367. https://doi.org/10.32744/pse.2025.5.22
Authors:
Irina I. Klimova (Russian Federation, Moscow) — Cand. Sci. (Philol.), Associate Professor, Нead of the Department of Foreign Languages and Intercultural Communication. Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation. E-mail: Iiklimova@mail.ru
Vanda S. Arutyunian (Russian Federation, Moscow) — Cand. Sci. (Philology), Associate Professor. Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation. E-mail: wandaaru@mail.ru
Galina V. Tretyakova (Russian Federation, Moscow) — Cand. Sci. (Educ.), Associate Professor. Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation. E-mail: galinavictretyakova@gmail.com
Olga V. Ginzburg (Russian Federation, Moscow) — Cand. Sci. (Philology), Associate Professor. Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation. E-mail: ivolya2000@mail.ru
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