Unveiling the Obstacles: Pre-service Teachers' Perceptions and Challenges in Promoting Critical Thinking in EFL Context

Despite Critical thinking (CT) has been promoted as being important skill to be nurtured in English language teaching (ELT) context, pre-service teachers’ experiences and perceptions of CT have drawn less attention. This study investigate pre-service teachers’ perceptions and challenges in the way of their attempts to encourage CT in the EFL classroom and look into potential ways to get beyond these perceived obstacles. The study used descriptive quantitive. The data were collected through an online survey of 25 pre-service language teachers in 7<sup>th</sup> semester of ELE program in a university. The finding reveal several issues that the participants had an inadequate understanding of CT and are not given the necessary more training or support in their programs to adopt CT-oriented teaching approaches. The results additionally reveal a variety of contextual and individual difficulties that the participants encountered while attempting to include CT into their language instruction. The study concludes with suggestions that may assist language teachers construct CT-oriented pedagogies while still fostering a CT.