Critical reading is an indispensable learning skill that students need both inside and outside the classroom. Even though many attempts haave been made to unravel the impact of critical reading on Second Language (L2) reading, there is a paucity of investigations examining the effect of critical reading combined with students’ active role. The study raises three questions. They are: 1) What are the students’ views about reading comprehension and critical reading skills? And2) What difficulties do students encounter when they read? And3) how can critical reading strategies improve students’ reading comprehension? Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate how critical reading skills can enhance students reading’ comprehension while working in groups. For the sake of this study, data were gathered from an open-ended questionnaire distributed to university students before intervention, learning logs, and participant observations. The results of the study revealed significant effects of critical reading skills on students’ reading comprehension at different levels. Students viewed reading as an active dynamic process that motivated the activation of higher order thinking skills and helped students tap into their prior experiences to approach the reading materials. It also showed how implementing a rich repertoire of critical reading skills enabled students to overcome reading problems as they could read not just what is directly stated but what is being communicated between and beyond the lines. The findings offered several pedagogical implications and recommendations for further research.

中文翻译：

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调查批判性阅读技巧对学生阅读理解的影响

批判性阅读是学生在课堂内外都需要的一项不可或缺的学习技能。尽管已经进行了许多尝试来揭示批判性阅读对第二语言（L2）阅读的影响，但很少有研究检验批判性阅读与学生的积极作用相结合的影响。该研究提出了三个问题。它们是： 1) 学生对阅读理解和批判性阅读技能的看法是什么？And2) 学生在阅读时遇到了哪些困难？And3) 批判性阅读策略如何提高学生的阅读理解能力？因此，本研究的目的是调查批判性阅读技巧如何在小组工作时提高学生的阅读理解能力。为了这项研究，数据是从在干预、学习日志和参与者观察之前分发给大学生的开放式问卷中收集的。研究结果揭示了批判性阅读技巧对不同水平学生阅读理解的显着影响。学生将阅读视为一个积极的动态过程，它激发了高阶思维技能的激活，并帮助学生利用他们以前的经验来接近阅读材料。它还展示了如何实施丰富的批判性阅读技巧，使学生能够克服阅读问题，因为他们不仅可以阅读直接陈述的内容，还可以阅读线之间和线外传达的内容。研究结果为进一步研究提供了一些教学意义和建议。