A Correlational Study Of Junior High School Students’ Critical Thinking And English Reading Comprehension Scores

The latest English Curriculum Standards Compulsory Education(Ministry of Education,2022)proposes to cultivate students’ core competence of English discipline,which is consistent with the Senior High School English Curriculum Standards.It also emphasizes the cultivation of students’ thinking quality,which requires students to develop their logical thinking,dialectical thinking and innovative thinking.As an important thinking quality,critical thinking plays an important role in cultivating students to analyze and solve problems,and promoting students’ deep learning.The proposal of the new English curriculum standard in compulsory education(2022)shows the importance of cultivating critical thinking ability in English teaching.At present,the research object of the cultivation of critical thinking ability focuses on college students,especially on English majors.This paper is based on Wen Qiufang’s Hierarchical Thinking Model and Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives,aiming to investigate the correlation between critical thinking ability and English reading comprehension scores among 100 students from a middle school in Guangdong Province.The study data was obtained from questionnaires and tests,with descriptive analysis and correlation analysis using SPSS 26.0.This study focuses on the following questions:(1)What is the current situation of junior high school students’ critical thinking including critical thinking disposition and critical thinking skills?(2)What is the correlation between critical thinking and English reading comprehension scores?Through investigation and data analysis,the following results show that: Firstly,the critical thinking disposition of junior high students is at a negative level,and they are at a moderate level in critical thinking skills.For the sub-category of critical thinking disposition,students performed best in truth-seeking.Three dimensions of critical thinking skills,ranked by scores,are analysis,inference,and evaluation.Secondly,there is a positive correlation between the critical thinking of junior high school students and English reading achievement.Six dimensions of critical thinking disposition are positively correlated with English reading scores as well.Three dimensions of critical thinking skills: analysis,inference,and evaluation have positive correlation with English reading scores.Based on the research results,the author puts forward some suggestions and hopes that this study can provide some references for future research on English reading teaching or the relationship between critical thinking ability and English reading comprehension.