A Study On The Correlation Among Senior High School Students’ Critical Thinking Disposition,Self-regulated Learning Strategies And English Reading Strategies

In 2017,the National English Curriculum Standards(NECS)for Senior High School puts forward the four core competences in English subject including the quality of thinking and language proficiency,which reveals the important role of critical thinking and innovation in helping students understand the world from a cross-cultural perspective.As the basic element of the four core competences,language proficiency emphasizes reading as one of the main input methods of language,and it plays an important role in English learning.Besides,with the new progress of the study of second language acquisition(SLA),the importance of learners’ individual factors in the process of language acquisition has been paid more attention to.And among them,self-regulated learning has become a hot research topic,which emphasizes the impact of different psychological factors on students’ effective learning from a holistic rather than isolated perspective.However,most of the previous researches focused on the pair’s relationship among critical thinking disposition,self-regulated learning strategies and English reading strategies,and the research subjects were mainly college students.Therefore,in order to make some targeted pedagogical suggestions based on the characteristics of different students,this study firstly explores senior high school students’ differences in gender and subjects(i.e.arts and sciences)of critical thinking disposition,self-regulated learning strategies and English reading strategiesrespectively.Based on this,the present study discusses the relationship among these three variables in depth,so as to provide some suggestions for students in different gender and subjects(i.e.arts and sciences)in terms of the relationship.Then,this study randomly selected two classes from arts and two classes from sciences in Grade Two of a senior high school in Hohhot,with a total of209 students as the subjects,and used questionnaires to collect data.And this study aims to address the four key questions: firstly,does critical thinking disposition differ significantly with respect to gender and subjects(i.e.arts and sciences)? Secondly,do self-regulated learning strategies differ significantly with respect to gender and subjects(i.e.arts and sciences)?Thirdly,do English reading strategies differ significantly with respect to gender and subjects(i.e.arts and sciences)? Finally,what is the relationship among critical thinking disposition,self-regulated learning strategies and English reading strategies? Then,the quantitative data from the questionnaires were analyzed by SPSS 22.0 and AMOS 24.0 including Descriptive Statistics,Pearson Correlation,Multiple Linear Regression and Path Analysis.The results of the study show that: first of all,it has indicated that the general situation of senior high school students’ critical thinking disposition is in a positive tendency;and the four dimensions of analyticity,truth-seeking,cognitive maturity and justice-orientedness differ significantly in gender;the dimensions of analyticity and truth-seeking show great difference in subjects.Secondly,the general situation of self-regulated strategies reaches a significant level between low CTD group and high CTD group;there are significant discrepancies in the three dimensions of metacognition strategies,cognitive strategies and cooperative learning in gender,and correspondingly,significant differences are shown in the dimensions of metacognition strategies,emotional regulation and cooperative learning in subjects.Thirdly,the general application of English reading strategies differs significantly between low CTD group and high CTD group;there are significant discrepancies in the three dimensions of memory strategies,compensation strategies and metacognition strategies both in gender and in subjects.Finally,through the correlation analysis,it can be seen that there is a basically moderate and positive correlation among critical thinking disposition,self-regulated learning strategies and English reading strategies at the overall level.Besides,the first two variables have a significant predictive effect on the use of English reading strategies for senior high school students,among which the analyticity,self-confidence and open-mindedness in critical thinking disposition,the cognitive strategies and cooperative strategies in self-regulated learning strategies significantly contribute to the prediction.This study combines critical thinking disposition with learners’ psychological factors and specific English skills(reading)to understand the relationship among critical thinking disposition,self-regulated learning strategies and English reading strategies,as well as the differences in gender and subjectsamong these three variables,and then help teachers to promote the effective use of students’ reading strategies and self-regulated learning strategies according to students’ individual differences.At the same time,this study uses a variety of quantitative data analysis tools,such as Multiple Linear Regression and Path Analysis,which may provide different perspectives for future research.Afterwards,based on the relationship between critical thinking disposition and other variables,the present study brings up some pedagogical suggestions on promoting the effective use of English reading strategies and self-regulated learning strategies.For example,teachers can help students set appropriate goals in the new learning stage and introduce English reading strategies systematically.