Thinking Skills Development In A Forum-Based Writing Environment

In the field of English education in China, it is noted that thinking skills of English majors are far from being satisfactory. Research finds that English majors seem to do more learning related to linguistic competence, such as imitation and memory, than that related to their thinking skills, such as analyzing problems, thinking creatively and proposing personal opinions independently. However, the urgent need to cultivate and develop students'thinking skills has not been fully recognized in most classrooms in China. Although progress has been made in research of thinking skills development, limited studies are found that were set in CALL writing environments and those exploring how students actually develop their thinking skills are even sparse.This qualitative study was conducted in a forum-based undergraduate course named"BA Thesis Design"in the School of Foreign Languages at a university in eastern China. The purpose of the study is to explore the thinking process of a group of EFL students in a forum-based writing environment so as to describe and understand the developmental process of their thinking skills with regard to critical and creative thinking, information processing as well as reasoning. The study also intends to discover key factors that influence the students'thinking development. The primary data in this study derive from the on-going informal oral interviews, end-of-course written interview, field observation notes and course products. The major findings of the study are summarized as follows:Firstly, among the three thinking skills, the participants'critical and creative thinking skills seem to have demonstrated the most obvious development, in particular, original thinking and multiple perspectives. In this forum-based writing environment, the course instructor's questions and suggestions in addition to the peer feedback have constantly challenged and encouraged participants to think more critically and creatively.Secondly, the participants'information processing skills are found to have undergone a moderate improvement, mainly related to the BA theses writing task. The brand-new experience of designing a BA thesis project activates participants'mind and stimulates them in high-level thinking while they are engaged in a series of thought-demanding tasks such as locating and collecting information, comparing and contrasting information. However, the development in reasoning skills, especially their inference-drawing skills, seems less obvious than the former two. One possible explanation for this phenomenon lies in the inadequate data. Another may be the fact that drawing inferences mostly happen in one's mind, not necessarily presented in the form of written words or oral expressions.Thirdly, several key factors have been found to facilitate or inhibit the development of thinking skills. Facilitating factors include teacher scaffolding, forum-based collaborative learning and text-mediated thinking while the inhibiting factors are peers'"misleading"feedback, course management-related issues as well as time and computer-related constraints.In light of the above findings, the researcher makes some suggestions for improving the instructional effectiveness in such a learning context, including adopting more questioning strategies to better facilitate thinking development and helping students adjust their attitudes and strategies towards their peers'different feedback for better collaborative learning outcomes.