چكيده
The present study is an attempt to investigate Iranian EFL learners’ critical thinking ability and its possible relationship with cultural intelligence and ethnic identity of them. It also pursued if there is any significant difference among the three ethnic groups in their critical thinking and cultural intelligence. To this end, 180 ethnically diverse language learners from Turkish, Persian, and Kurdish ethnicities and from different language institutes in Tabriz, Tehran, Silvana, and Paveh were selected non-randomly. In order to achieve a homogeneous group of participants, Nelson proficiency test was administered to them. Among them, 120 students were selected considering 1 SD above and below the mean score of the group. Three questionnaires of critical thinking, cultural intelligence and ethnic identity were administered to them. The data were analyzed through Pearson correlation, one-way ANOVA and multivariate ANOVA (MANOVA) all of which assume normality of the data. The findings revealed that the first null hypothesis, which poses there isn’t any relationship between critical thinking and cultural intelligence of three Iranian ethnic groups of English learners, was supported. In other words, no significant relationship was found between critical thinking and cultural intelligence among three different ethnic groups of Iranian EFL learners. On the second and third null hypotheses which argue that there isn’t any significant difference among the three ethnic groups in their critical thinking and there isn’t any significant difference among the three ethnic groups in their cultural intelligence, the results showed that three different ethnic groups were different in critical thinking and cultural intelligence ability so the second and the third null hypotheses were rejected.
Key words: Critical Thinking, Cultural Intelligence, Ethnic Identity, EFL Learners
