The Correlation Between Critical Thinking Ability And Senior Students’ Writing Performance In Continuation Writing

National English Curriculum Standard for Common Senior High School(2017)defines the core competence of English discipline as an integration of learning ability,thinking ability,cultural awareness and linguistic ability.As for the thinking ability,it contains innovative thinking,critical thinking and logical thinking.Continuation writing,a brand-new type of writing task in College Entrance Examination,requires students to complete the reading material based on their understanding of the given reading material,which evaluates students’ ability of critical thinking.Students with stronger critical thinking ability can better make their composition to the point,use more explicit language to tell the story and relate with the given text more coherently.Therefore,continuation writing is viewed as an effective way to improve English learning and evaluate the ability of critical thinking.However,it’s a fact that the present conditions of high school students’ critical thinking ability and the English writing teaching are far from satisfaction,which forces teachers to pay more attention to cultivating students’ critical thinking ability.To help teachers better reflect on their teaching modes and then integrate critical thinking cultivation into English classes,the study,also aiming to improve students’ writing performance,presents the condition of senior high school students’ critical thinking ability and the correlation between it and the continuation writing performance.The study used the Chinese version of Critical Thinking Appraisal by Watson-Glaser to measure the critical thinking ability of totally 92 students from a senior high school in Taizhou.According to the thinking process of writing proposed by Wen and Liu,students’ compositions in pre-test and post-test are both marked in terms of relevance,explicitness and coherence.By collecting and analyzing the data,the study is aimed at answer the following questions:(1)What is the level of senior high school students’ critical thinking ability?(2)Is there any correlation between critical thinking ability and senior high school students’ continuation writing performance in terms of relevance,explicitness and coherence? In the three-month teaching experiment,two paralleled classes are chosen as the experimental group and the control group.The experimental class focused on the cultivation of critical thinking with various related teaching activities while the control one adopted the traditional English writing teaching mode.With the scores of WGCTA and continuation writing outcomes collected and analyzed,the study can draw on the following conclusions:(1)The present level of senior high school students’ critical thinking ability is relatively low.As far as the chosen students are concerned,the average score of WGCTA is 51.8831<55,which can be decided that their critical thinking ability is poor.(2)The progress in critical thinking ability has a significant effect in senior high school students’ continuation writing in terms of relevance,explicitness and coherence.According to the findings,the study put forward some pedagogical implications for schools,teachers and students.First,schools are supposed to diversify and scientize the assessment mode and add more extra-curricular activities contributing to the cultivation of critical thinking,which can effectively motivate students to think by themselves.Besides,it is necessary for teachers to realize the significance of critical thinking ability for students,develop their own critical thinking ability and integrate the cultivation of it into English classes.As for students,they are expected to think independently,express bravely and get involved in activities actively.However,the study has certain limitations,such as the shortage of sample size,unicity of measuring instrument and the brevity of study duration,which may affect the study results to some extent and are expected to be improved in the subsequent studies.