A Study On The Correlation Between Senior High School Students’ Critical Thinking Skills In English Reading And Their English Reading Achievements

English reading plays an important role in senior high school English teaching and learning,so it is necessary to cultivate students’ English reading ability in English teaching.English reading is a process of thinking,in which students construct their own knowledge systems in their minds by understanding the contents of the reading texts and the authors’ writing purposes.The New English Curriculum Standards for Senior High School(2017 Edition)takes thinking quality as a core competence of English discipline and defines it as the ability and level of thinking in logic,criticism,innovation and so on.Critical thinking is an important way of thinking and critical thinking skills are important means to deal with problems by using critical thinking.Critical thinking skills have remained the focus in foreign research.In contrast,the domestic studies on critical thinking skills are relatively new,most of which focus on such research fields as psychology and nursing,while only a few are carried out in the field of second language acquisition.In addition,there are a few empirical studies on critical thinking skills at home,and most of the research subjects are college students.Based on this,the present study attempts to explore the relationship between senior high school students’ critical thinking skills in English reading and their English reading achievements from two aspects of critical thinking skills and English reading achievements,which aims to provide some suggestions for practical English reading teaching.The present study adopted the method of combining quantitative and qualitative research.204 students of Grade Two in senior high schools were selected as the research subjects,including 99 urban senior high school students and 105 rural senior high school students.This study has the following three research questions:(1)What is the current situation of senior high school students’ critical thinking skills in English reading?What are the differences between urban and rural senior high school students’ critical thinking skills in English reading?(2)What is the current situation of senior high school students’ English reading achievements? What are the differences between urban and rural senior high school students’ English reading achievements?(3)What is the correlation between senior high school students’ critical thinking skills in English reading and their English reading achievements? Research data were collected through the questionnaire on critical thinking skills in English reading and the English reading comprehension test.And the data of the questionnaires and the English reading comprehension test were analyzed by SPSS 25.0.Besides,four teachers and eight students were interviewed.The research results show that:(1)Senior high school students’ critical thinking skills in English reading are generally at the moderate level.Senior high school students have a better grasp of the sub-skills of interpretation,analysis and explanation,while they have a weaker grasp of the sub-skills of inference,self-regulation and evaluation.The critical thinking skills in English reading of urban senior high school students are higher than those of rural senior high school students,and there is significant difference between the two variables.(2)The English reading achievements of senior high school students are at the medium level.Students get higher scores in detailed understanding questions and main idea questions,while they get lower scores in reasoning or judgement questions and semantic guessing questions.The English reading achievements of urban senior high school students are higher than those of rural senior high school students,and there is a significant difference between the two variables.(3)Senior high school students’ critical thinking skills in English reading are positively correlated with their English reading achievements.There is a significant correlation between interpretation skill and main idea questions,and there is also a strong positive correlation between reference skill and reasoning or judgment questions.Finally,based on the research results above,some pedagogical implications on how to cultivate senior high school students’ critical thinking skills in English reading teaching were put forward,and the limitations of the study and the future research directions were discussed.By doing this can some references be provided for English reading teaching and learning in senior high schools and for follow-up research.