Correlational Study On Critical Thinking Skills And English Reading Comprehension Ability Of Vocational School Students

The concept of critical thinking,which originated in the 1920 s in Socrates,became a hot issue in western culture in the 1960 s.Domestic research on critical thinking began in the early 1980 s,and researchers gradually began to study it in different fields.However,little of the research is related to secondary vocational school students,especially the study of the relationship between critical thinking skill and English reading comprehension ability.The purpose of the present study is to explore an understanding of the relationship between critical thinking skill and English reading comprehension ability of secondary vocational school students.The author uses Facione’s(1990)research on critical thinking disposition as the theoretical framework and will evaluate English reading comprehension tests in two secondary vocational schools.The participants for the study are from Foshan and Zhaoqing secondary vocational schools.The study attempts to answer the following questions:1)What are the levels of critical thinking skills of secondary vocational school students?2)Is there a correlation between the critical thinking skills and English reading ability of secondary vocational school students ?3)Does the critical thinking skills of secondary vocational school students affect their reading?The participants took part in the questionnaire survey of the California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory Chinese version(CTDI-CV),which is used to test the participants’ critical thinking disposition,and they also took the model test of Public English Test System Level 2 Written Test reading part of 2017,which is used to test the participants’ English reading comprehension ability.In addition,interviews were conducted in the research.The interviews help to gain more depth of knowledge about the students’ level of critical thinking.Six students attended the interview.The SPSS22.0 is used to analyze the data obtained from the questionnaire surveyand the test.At last,findings of the study are as follows:1)Secondary vocational school students have a weak critical thinking skills in general.2)There is no obvious positive correlation between secondary vocational school students’ overall level of critical thinking and overall English reading comprehension.However,there are still correlations between truth-seeking and theme topic,analyticity,and the induction generalization.3)The results of the multiple regression analysis suggest that secondary vocational school students’ critical thinking skills have significant effects on their English reading comprehension ability even though there exists only a weak correlation among several components of the two.Furthermore,students’ open-mindedness skill,systematicity skill and maturity skill are three significant factors influencing their English reading comprehension competence.The research findings suggest that the overall level of critical thinking skills of secondary vocational school students is not high.Therefore,it is an important task for educators to guide students to improve their reading comprehension competence through cultivating their thinking skills.