Perceived Critical Thinking Engagement Across Preparation, Implementation, and Evaluation Phases of Talk Show Activities in an EFL Speaking Course

This study examined how undergraduate EFL students perceived their engagement in critical thinking across the preparation, implementation, and evaluation phases of a talk show activity in a speaking course. Using an exploratory descriptive survey design, the study collected data from 28 third-semester students at Pattimura University through an 18-item Likert questionnaire measuring three dimensions of critical thinking, analytical thinking, self-reflection, and decision-making, across phase-specific sub-activities. Descriptive analysis of mean scores showed that students perceived high overall critical thinking engagement, with a mean of 4.16 across all phases. However, beyond this surface consistency, the dimension-level data revealed a structured cognitive handover across the activity sequence: students perceived decision-making most strongly during preparation, with scores declining progressively toward evaluation. In contrast, analytical thinking moved in the opposite direction and reached its peak during the evaluation phase. Self-reflection remained relatively stable across preparation and evaluation but was lowest during the live performance sub-activity of the implementation phase, indicating a specific gap in students' real-time metacognitive monitoring capacity. These findings suggest that the talk show format engages critical thinking dimensions differentially across its phases rather than uniformly, with implications for how structured speaking activities are scaffolded in EFL contexts.