On The Cultivation Of EFL Pupils' Ability To Think In English

The society is moving forward as time goes by, which enhances the requirements on English teachers. That urges them to raise the efficiency of teaching and to improve pupils' understanding. And they must make efforts to remove the hurdles of thinking in English. And that consequently requires English teachers to have feasible and efficient thought training programs for pupils. This thesis therefore focuses on how to cultivate pupils' ability to think in English. English teachers have to relate to relevant language acquisition theories in order to find the ideal way to cultivate pupils' ability to think in English.The old saying that "telling the people how to fish is far better than giving them fish" can explain my points. The process of cultivating the pupils' ability to think in English is not finished just in one day. It must be conjoined into the concrete teaching procedures, including the steps from the input of new knowledge to intake and the step of output. The whole complete circle is filled with the cultivation of thinking in English.In fact, the cultivation of thinking in English has close relationships with the Input Theory, for they are both trying to explain language acquisition process. From the input process to the intake process it has two positive roles.One is that it makes it possible for input to be converted into comprehensible input. The other is that it helps comprehensible input break through the Affective Filter and finally enter the brain's shelf of Universal Grammar. From the intake process to the output process it also has an important role, for it helps arrange the information promptly and get ready for comprehensible output later on. This thesis puts forward a new hypothesis on the Input Theory. The new hypothesis consists of three new rules for thought training: the rule of natural input; the rule of ample input; the rule of authentic input.The Critical Period Hypothesis supplies a necessary condition in the Input Theory. It emphasizes the importance of the particular time during the comprehensible input process. Meanwhile, thought training also has to grasp the critical period. And it is possible for pupils to reach the stage of the target language through efficient thought training.The classics vividly illustrated a teacher's role as a preacher, an instructor and a prompter. A teacher must not only pass information of knowledge to pupils, but also inform pupils about the ways in which information of knowledge is digested. A teacher's value is embodied in the effort to get rid of the barrier of thinking so that pupils will have no difficulty in understanding. So it is a teacher's task to cultivate pupils' ability to think in English and to adjust pupils' thinking process in order to avoid taking the wrong way.On the bases of classics and practice, the best way to cultivate Chinese pupils' ability to think in English is nothing but the heuristic question and the heuristic retelling, together with interesting games and feasible teaching materials like text-books. And the compiling of the new text-book must follow the sprit of thought training. It must not only do contribution to help pupils intake knowledge, but also help pupils to consolidate knowledge with its particular design: organizing and retrieving tasks. And this requires the same amount of logic thinking in the course of compiling text-books.The author's future aim is to compile suitable primary English text-books for Chinese pupils.