<![CDATA[The development of critical thinking has become a central objective of twenty-first-century education, particularly in English language learning. However, the extent to which elementary English textbooks facilitate critical thinking remains underexplored. This study investigates the representation of critical thinking skills in My Next Words Grade 5 Student’s Book through a multimodal evaluation of learning tasks. Employing a qualitative content analysis design, the study examines verbal and visual elements embedded in textbook activities using Facione’s Critical Thinking Framework, Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy, and principles of Multimodal Discourse Analysis. Data were collected from task instructions, dialogues, exercises, images, and visual-textual interactions across all textbook units. The findings reveal that the textbook predominantly promotes lower-order cognitive processes, particularly remembering, understanding, and applying. While several activities encourage learners to express personal opinions and make simple decisions, opportunities for higher-order thinking skills such as analyzing, evaluating, and creating remain limited and unevenly distributed. Furthermore, multimodal resources are primarily used to support vocabulary acquisition and comprehension rather than to stimulate inquiry, reasoning, argumentation, or problem-solving. The analysis suggests that the textbook partially aligns with contemporary educational goals emphasizing critical thinking development but lacks systematic integration of cognitively demanding tasks. This study contributes to the growing body of textbook evaluation research by demonstrating how multimodal resources influence cognitive engagement in language learning materials. The findings offer practical implications for curriculum designers, textbook developers, and educators seeking to strengthen critical thinking instruction in elementary English education.]]>
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