Question Design Of English Reading To Develop High School Students’Critical Thinking

This thesis involves a research into question designing in English reading class to cultivate secondary school students’ critical thinking ability,aiming at finding out the problems in existence and putting forward some improvement suggestions to optimize the reading class question types and to advance the development of students’ critical thinking.Guided by Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives and Constructivism learning theory,this thesis uses research methods like interviews,questionnaires and classroom observation.Its research questions are as follows:First,how is the teachers’awareness of fostering students’ critical thinking by English classroom questioning?What is the current status quo of high school English teachers’ classroom questioning?Second,what is the situation of student’ critical thinking in high school?Third,how is students’recognition of English classroom questions?This thesis yields the following findings:First,English teachers just have a rough understanding about how to use questions to cultivate critical thinking and there is a gap between their knowledge and action.Much more display questions are asked than referential questions and evaluative questions;Second,as a whole,students’ critical thinking ability is not ideal,still staying at a low level and their critical thinking tends to be conflictive;Third,students have an affirmative and positive attitude towards teachers’classroom questioning,expecting teachers to ask more referential questions and evaluative questions.In order to address those problems,based on high school English reading teaching material this study offers a teaching example about question design.This study demonstrates the application value of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives and constructivism learning theory.It is of significance to question designing in that for teachers it can optimize reading class question type to cultivate students’critical thinking and to promote students’higher thinking ability such as analysis,reasoning,evaluating.