A Survey On The Senior High School Students’ Critical Thinking Applying To English Reading Learning

In such a technology-driven and information explosion age,people are easily distracted by a variety of irrelevant informa tion.Critical thinking has become an important educational goal of cultivating future international citizens,and it is also one of the hot topics of domestic foreign language teaching research.Besides,there is an inseparable connection between reading and thinking.Therefore,using reading to cultivate and improve students’ critical thinking ability has become an inevitable choice for English teaching and research.Hence,this thesis focuses on the current situation of senior high school students’ application of critical thinking in English reading.The purpose of this research is to investigate and analyze the current situation of senior high school students’ application of critical thinking in English reading learning in order to find specific problems of students’ application of critical thinking and give advice to improve students’ critical thinking skills applying to English reading learning.Based on Facione’s model of critical thinking,this research takes 247 students from two different senior high schools in Guigang as its research subjects.Then,this research investigates and analyzes the overall situation of senior high school students’ application of critical thinking in English reading by using both quantitative and qualitative research methods.The questionnaire,including truth-seeking,open-mindedness,analysis,systematicity,inquisitiveness,self-confidence and maturity seven dimensions,was made a modification according to California’s critical in English thinking disposition inventory.Last,the result of the questionnaire was input into the data statistical analysis software and analyzed by it,while the qualitative research was by interviewing 9 students randomly selected from the 247 research subjects,which is a supplement of the questionnaire.The research questions that this thesis explored are as follows.(1)What is the overall situation of senior high school students’ application of critical thinking in English reading learning?(2)Are there any significant differences between male and female groups and between high score and low score groups in the application of critical thinking?(3)What are the problems and suggestions on cultivating students’ critical thinking ability?After analyzing,the results indicate,(1)Senior high school students cannot apply critical thinking to English reading learning very well.They are still in a medium extent in general.This is because that English teachers do not pay much attention to teaching the knowledge and skills of critical thinking to students in class,neither can they cultivate students’ thinking and judging ability in class.(2)There exist significant differences between the male and female groups and between high score and low score groups.Besides,they both have a significant difference in the dimensions of truth-seeking,open-mindedness and maturity.For the gender group,the cognitive factors,social,behavior and environmental factors may lead to this significant difference between male and female students;for the English grade group,the reason might lie in students’ English level.If they are quite good at English,they can better understand the reading materials and further to think.Otherwise,their critical thinking ability applying to English reading will be a little weak.Based on the research results,the author put forward some suggestions for improving senior high school students’ critical thinking ability.For school,(1)Schools are required to emphasize the importance of critical thinking for students’ study and future development.(2)Schools need to develop an atmosphere of thinking on campus and offer more chances for students to enhance their thinking and judging ability.For English teachers,(1)English teachers themselves firstly need to master the knowledge about critical thinking well.(2)English teachers are supposed to give more time to the students in reading lessons.In this way,students can discuss,question and express their own opinions freely.(3)English teachers can also create an atmosphere for students to read more foreign cultural books,thus improving students’ critical thinking ability.For students,(1)Students themselves need to make some efforts to change their cognition towards critical thinking so as to realize the importance of critical thinking for their future development.(2)Students can read more foreign books as much as possible,which is beneficial for them to practice and develop their critical thinking in English reading learning.Hence,it can draw a conclusion that the situation of senior high school students’ application of critical thinking in English reading is under a medium trend in general,which needs to be promoted.After analyzing,it is found out that there are some objective reasons which can be explained the existed problems of students’ application of critical thinking in English reading.This thesis hopes that schools and teachers can pay attention to and take measures to improve students’ ability of using critical thinking in English reading.Besides,students also need to make some efforts to enhance their ability of critical thinking applying to English reading.