Abstract:

Purpose:
This study investigates critical thinking in Palestinian Arabic-speaking adolescents and its relationship to linguistic-cognitive measures—specifically syntactic complexity and the use of metacognitive and metalinguistic verbs (meta-verbs). It also compares syntactic complexity across two discourse tasks—fable retelling and critical thinking—to examine task-related language performance.

Method:
Forty-two typically developing 7th grader students completed a fable retelling and a critical thinking task via Zoom. Each participant listened to two fables in Modern Standard Arabic, produced retellings, and answered eight structured questions targeting critical thinking. Transcripts were analyzed for verbal productivity, syntactic complexity, and meta-verb use, and response accuracy was scored for the critical thinking questions.

Results:
On average, retellings contained 186.60 words, 32.64 communication units (C-units), and a clausal density of 1.59. Meta-verbs constituted ~10% of word use. Accuracy for inferential comprehension was high (88% for The Fox and the Crow; 79% for The Dog in the Manger), whereas higher-order reasoning items were more challenging. Overall critical thinking accuracy was 84%. Although syntactic complexity and meta-verb use did not significantly correlate with critical thinking scores, higher clausal density was positively associated with meta-verb use during fable retelling (r = .397, p < .01).

Conclusions:
Fables appear to be culturally appropriate tools for assessing spoken language, comprehension, and higher-order reasoning in adolescents. While inferential comprehension was generally strong, performance on higher-order questions revealed variability in the ability to justify, reflect, and generalize ideas.

Keywords:

Adolescents, fables, narrative, syntactic complexity, Arabic.