The Evaluation On The English Textbook-Solutions From The Perspective Of Developing Students' Critical Thinking Ability

The High School English Curriculum Standards(2017 edition)points out that the cultivation of students' thinking qualities is a very important objective of English teaching.Critical thinking ability is a necessary quality of thought.It is a rational reflective thinking and consists of two aspects:critical thinking skills and critical thinking dispositions.English textbook plays a significant role in developing students'critical thinking ability.Many scholars have conducted studies about investigating the extent of many different English textbooks in developing students' critical thinking ability in high education stage.However,few related researches are carried out to explore the extent of high school textbook in promoting students' critical thinking ability.This thesis evaluates the intermediate students' textbook-Solutions from the perspective of critical thinking.The theoretical framework of this research is based on the models in Delphi report and Bloom's taxonomy.The research questions include:1.To what extent could the intermediate students' book-Solutions promote the students' critical thinking skills?2.To what extent could the intermediate students' book-Solutions promote the students' critical thinking dispositions?In order to solve these problems,the author employed these research instruments:content analysis,interview and questionnaire.The results of this research shows:1.Seen from the macro perspective,the proportion of the tasks infused with CT skills in the whole textbook is 45.2%.This suggests the textbook has a potential to promote critical thinking skills.These critical skills including interpretation,application and analysis are promoted better.Seen from the micro perspective,the different section of the textbook has different focuses in developing critical thinking skills.These sections--culture,reading and writing have greater potential to promote students'critical thinking skills.2.The textbook-Solutions could promote the seven affective elements of critical thinking:open-mindedness,analyticity,inquisitiveness,self-confidence,truth-seeking,systematicity and maturity.These critical dispositions--open-mindedness' analyticity,inquisitiveness,and self-confidence can be cultivated better.According to the research findings,the author puts forward some suggestions for textbook compilers and teachers:For the textbook compilers,they should infuse more critical thinking skills with the tasks of textbook,especially the high-order thinking skills like inference,evaluation and explanation.And they also should integrate more critical affective elements in the texts and tasks of the textbook to promote students'students' critical dispositions.For teachers,they should try to modify or create some activities that could develop students' high-order critical thinking skills.They also need to make full use of affective elements in the textbook to stimulate students'growth.