Using Kialo Edu site to enhance students’ critical thinking in English lessons

Critical thinking has proved its significance in language teaching as it not only enables students to evaluate and monitor their own learning style but also correlates with learners' language competency, especially in writing and oral communication skill (Shirkhani & Fahimb, 2011). Moreover, in broader view, critical thinking serves as a core 21^st century skill that students in an ever-changing world need. However, ESL teachers usually face enormous difficulties in integrating this concept into their online and offline lessons (Chau & Cunningham, 2021). One of the biggest problems is the lack of effective and appealing tools to incorporate critical thinking skill in English classes. Hence, the aim of this mini-workshop is to share the author's experience of using Kialo Edu which is specially designed for classroom use in argument mapping and debates. This tool has its advantage of a clear and visually attractive interface which facilitates students to follow a logical discussion structure, profound collaboration. With Kialo Edu, ESL teachers can host classroom debates involving interactions between teachers and their students and among students themselves under teachers' supervision. Moreover, Kialo's argument-tree structure leads students to consider counter-arguments, develop a logical outline of their argument for writing assignments which are also beneficial for standardized test preparation like IELTS, TOEFL, etc., and applications in higher education. In brief, Kialo Edu provides spaces for interactions with well-reasoned discussions, which would encourage Vietnamese ESL teachers to consider as a useful tool to improve their students' critical thinking in their classes.