An Empirical Study On The Impact Of Project-based Learning On Chinese English Majors’ Critical Thinking Ability

In recent years, there has been extensive discussion about Chinese English majors(CEMs) suffering from weakness in logical, analytical, problem solving and decisionmaking ability. These problems seem to be associated with deficiency of criticalthinking (CT) in CEMs. The reason accounting for this phenomenon is for a long periodof time and traditional English teaching lays less emphasis on fostering English majors’thinking ability. Project-based Learning (PBL) has been heralded as an effectiveinstruction to develop CT skills of language learners. Nevertheless, rare empiricallyrelated studies are conducted in the area of English as a foreign language (EFL),especially for EFL students in the context of China.This study investigated the effects of PBL implemented in the elementary stage ofCEMs’ main courses, on students’ CT ability and its sub-skills. Ninety-seven freshmanundergraduate students majoring in English from Chongqing University participated inthis19-week program. A control group (N=52) who received only ContemporaryCollege English course and an experimental group (N=45) who received additional PBLwere divided by this dissertation. The argumentative essays of96freshman studentswere analyzed in terms of the elements of CT. Ennis-Weir Critical Thinking Essay Test(Ennis-Weir Test) was employed to measure difference in CT abilities of subjectsbetween two groups after the implementation of PBL program. Before the formal test,this research delivered a pilot study consisting of an eleven week PBL training on the45EG subjects and Ennis-Weir Test on5sophomore English majors.97Ennis-Weir TestEssays were used as the research data of this study. With scoring criteria provided by theEnnis-Weir Test, three experienced English teachers were trained to evaluate theircompositions and the raters reached high inter-rater reliability (r=.75) among them. Thestatistical techniques including descriptive statistics, independent samples T-test, etc.,were collected to analyze the subjects’ CT competence and an exploratory study onsubjects’ compositions were presented as well, together with180project diaries, servedas qualitative data.The results implied that:①Subjects who took part in PBL were more capable ofCT skills than subjects who received traditional comprehensive English on theEnnis-Weir Test.②By means of PBL program, subjects from the EG enhanced theirindividual items of CT competence, including getting the point, seeing the reasons and assumptions, stating one’s point, offering good reasons, seeing other possibilities(including other possible explanations), responding appropriately to equivocation,irrelevance, circularity, reversal of an if-then (or other conditional) relationship,avoiding the straw person fallacy, overgeneralization, excessive skepticisms covered inthe Ennis-Weir Test.