Critical questioning skills of bilingual children

This study reports the critical questioning skills of monolingual and bilingual children aged between 5 and 6. By examining their questions, this research employs Bloom’s critical questioning paradigm to explore whether monolinguals or bilinguals are better at generating critical thinking questions on two stories, one of which is about the forgetful girl and the other is about the snail yearning for the things he does not possess. The findings have implications for teacher educators working with pre-school monolinguals and bilinguals, since bilinguals outperform monolinguals in the story of the forgetful girl whereas monolinguals outperform bilinguals about the story of a snail, which leads to the idea that monolinguals are better at abstract thinking and bilinguals are better at overall higher critical questioning.