A Study On Correlation Between English Majors’ Critical Thinking Disposition And Their English Argumentative Writing

Recently, many researchers begin to study the English majors’ critical thinking, and attach great importance to the cultivation of their critical thinking. Certain scholars find that the critical thinking is of great value to the acquisition of their professional knowledge. Since critical thinking disposition is one important component of the critical thinking ability and the English writing course can most directly reflect the students’ critical thinking. some scholars have done researches on the cultivation of critical thinking and their English writing. However, most of the previous researches are descriptive ones or reviews and the empirical researches on the relationship between the English majors’ critical thinking disposition and their English writing are far from sufficient. Therefore, this research makes an empirical study to explore the correlation between the English major students’ critical thinking disposition and their English argumentative writing ability. The author mentions three main research questions to be answered:(1). How about the English majors’ critical thinking disposition?(2). How about the English majors’ ability of English argumentative writing analyzed from the perspective of critical thinking?(3). Does the English majors’ critical thinking disposition have any correlation to their English argumentative writing?Based on Peng Meici’s instrument of the Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory of Chinese Version(CTDI-CV) revised according to Peter Facione’s California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory(CCTDI) and Wen Qiufang’s scoring criteria of English writing in the perspective of critical thinking, this paper measures the English majors’ level of critical thinking disposition and their English argumentative writing ability. And then the software SPSS.17.0 is used to analyze the correlation between the English majors’ critical thinking disposition and their English argumentative writing. The subjects of this study are 75 junior English major students who come from the Hebei University of Science and Technology. The instruments are Peng Meici’s CTDI-CV, English argumentative writing task, Wen Qiufang’s scoring criteria for English writing and the software SPSS.17.0.The research finds that the English majors in China actually have some problems in their critical thinking disposition. Only 7.1% students show a positive inclination toward critical thinking and 92.9% the students show an attitude away from critical thinking. In addition, the English majors show different abilities of English argumentative writing. 75.8% the students just reach a general level of ability or show weakness in English argumentative writing and 24.2% students have a relatively strong ability in English argumentative writing, showing a certain degree of critical thinking in their writing.The findings indicate that in general, the English majors’ critical thinking disposition is significantly correlated with their English argumentative writing, which suggests that the cultivation of the critical thinking disposition is beneficial to the improvement of their English argumentative writing. From the correlation between the seven sub-scales of critical thinking disposition and their English argumentative writing, it can be seen that five sub-scales of critical thinking disposition are significantly correlated with their English argumentative writing and these five sub-scale are truth-seeking, open-mindedness, analyticity, systematicity and maturity. The results indicate that these five critical thinking qualities have positive influences on the English argumentative writing and therefore the cultivation of these qualities will probably contribute to the improvement of English argumentative writing. However, the results indicate the other two sub-scales of critical thinking, namely the self-confidence and inquisitiveness, are not correlated with their English argumentative writing, suggesting that these two qualities of critical thinking do not show direct positive influence on the English argumentative writing ability. The findings of this research have some beneficial implications on the teaching of English writing of English majors. The research indicates that on the whole, the cultivation of critical thinking disposition is beneficial to the improvement of the English majors’ English writing ability, especially their English argumentative writing ability which can reflect the critical thinking. Therefore, in the process of teaching English writing, the English teachers should attach great importance to the cultivation of the students’ critical thinking disposition in their English writing courses and make full use of its positive influence on the English argumentative writing in order to further improve the students’ English argumentative writing ability.