A Study On The Correlationship Between English Majors’ Critical Thinking And Their English Writing Performance

Critical thinking aims to make a profound, independent and comprehensivereflection on one’s beliefs. In western countries, critical thinking has been researchedfor about one century and set as the primary goal of higher education since1990s.However, in China, only in the past decades has critical thinking been paid muchattention by scholars.The purpose of this study is mainly to explore the correlationship betweenEnglish majors’ critical thinking and their writing performance. The subjects of thisstudy are203students of English majors from Shenyang Normal University. TheCalifornia Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory (CCTDI) and CambridgeThinking Skills Assessment (CCTSA) are used to test the two dimensions of criticalthinking: critical thinking dispositions and critical thinking skills. Students’composition and their test results were analyzed through SPSS18.0. Results show thatstudents’ present critical thinking level is low and not satisfying. Furthermore, there isa significant positive correlationship between students’ critical thinking and theirwriting performance. Finally, ways to foster students’ critical thinking are analyzedand pedagogical implications have been proposed.