Improving English Majors’ Writing Proficiency In The Light Of Critical Thinking

As an important part of human thought, critical thinking plays an essential rolein the development of science and technology, the growth of economy and theadvancement of society. At present, the teaching of English writing still does notattach much importance in cultivating students’ critical thinking ability. And students’writing proficiency needs improving, which is manifested in two aspects (except fortheir language proficiency): the first one is students’ empty thought, they find little towrite about; the second is their disordered mind. They simply put what they arethinking in the paper, ignoring the inner relationships between each other. Thus theproducts are logically disordered. The reason account for this phenomenon is thelacking of proper guiding idea in writing. Teachers provide and analyze modelwritings in class, and then students imitate models. This kind of teaching neglectstudents thinking, which definitely leads to students’ emphasis on the form andignorance on contents. When grading students’ writings, teachers focus on theirlexical and grammatical errors. Thus students pay much attention to grammar whileoverlooking the improvement of thinking of their own (Liu Kuanping, et al.,2009).In view of the problems above, the author combines critical thinking in writingteaching, investigating the influence of critical thinking training on critical thinkingability and the effects of the changing in critical thinking ability on students’ writingachievement. The experiment lasts for12weeks, which is designed to find out therelationship between critical thinking and college English writing achievements ofChinese second-year English majors. The software SPSS is used in the experiment toanalysis the raw materials. This dissertation gets the following conclusion:1) Students’ critical thinking ability gets improved after3weeks training2) Students with high CT ability are able to do better in English writing3) Critical thinking ability can improve students’ writing proficiency andstudents with medium language proficiency improve most.Based on the research above, some pedagogical implications have been made for the teachers on the teaching activities of English majors. Teachers should enrichthe contents and skills of critical thinking by means of explaining, modeling, excising,peer feedback and teachers’ feedback, which will make students actively improvewriting proficiency effectively.