This study examines Japanese students' awareness regarding critical thinking (CT) attitudes and their attention to building their speaking skills in an EFL context to determine effective CT approaches. The study began with a literature review of CiNii articles and studies from the Web of Science database regarding CT theories and educational approaches. It examined critical thinking approaches in EFL contexts as well as foreign-language approaches of International Baccalaureate® (IB) programmes. The review indicated that critical thinking can be fostered when students are asked questions that require higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) in EFL courses. Then, EFL lessons were organised based on the theories and approaches examined in the review. Participants included 22 Japanese senior high school students. Various higher cognitive level questions were posed to the participants. Additionally, students were required to prepare and present academic presentations and answer discussion questions after the presentation. To ascertain students' awareness of attitudes toward CT, the Critical Thinking Attitudes Scale was used, and students' reflective essays were analysed using the co-occurrence network of words in the KH Coder. To measure students' speaking skills, their performance on speaking tasks was analysed by two International Baccalaureate's examiners. The results indicate that the improvement of CT attitudes and speaking skills is significant regardless of English proficiency level. These findings suggest that if EFL teachers ask HOTS questions, students would become aware of critical thinking attitudes and acquire English speaking skills by answering the questions in a Japanese EFL context.