A Study on Designing a Critical Writing Instruction Model for International Students Using Visual Thinking Strategies(VTS) : Focusing on René Magritte's The Treachery of Images

Abstract

This study aims to design and implement a critical writing instructional model using Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) for international students and to explore its educational implications. Previous approaches to critical writing instruction for international students have primarily focused on improving linguistic proficiency or text-based interpretation, often overlooking learners’ cognitive characteristics and thinking processes. To address this limitation, the present study reconceptualizes VTS not merely as an art appreciation technique but as a thinking strategy centered on observation, inference, and evidence-based reasoning, and integrates it into critical writing instruction. This study was conducted from the perspective of design-based research (DBR) with 59 international students enrolled at H University in Korea. A VTS-based critical writing program was designed and implemented, and qualitative data were collected from worksheets, students’ written texts, learner responses, and survey results. Representative case analyses and overall writing analyses were conducted to examine changes in learners’ thinking processes. The findings revealed that VTS-based critical writing instruction brought positive changes to learners’ approaches to artwork observation and meaning construction. In the initial stage, students tended to rely on emotional and impressionistic responses; however, after participating in the instructional process, they increasingly organized their interpretations based on visual evidence and developed claim–evidence structures in their writing. In addition, learner response analyses indicated reduced linguistic burden, increased participation, and enhanced confidence in writing. The significance of this study lies in reconceptualizing critical writing for international students as a process of developing thinking structures rather than merely a language-centered task. Furthermore, by connecting visual thinking with academic writing, this study proposes a new instructional possibility for general education writing courses designed for international students.