The Effect Of Cross-major Online Chat On English Majors’ Thinking

Thinking is an activity to perceive objective things, phenomena or events based on thepresentation or concept. It involves imaginal thinking and abstract thinking. The cultivationof thinking ability is an important goal in English education. Language skill training and theimprovement of students’thinking ability can neither be neglected in teaching. However,English majors’development of image thinking ability and dialectical thinking ability isrestricted, to a large extent, by the nature of English courses. When they graduate fromcollege, they can hardly reach the expected targets of higher education.The rapid development of network information technology has brought a new prospect forEnglish education. OICQ is a popular way for communication on campus. By using OICQ,students can chat online and carry out a discussion. In this study, the technology was adopted toestablish virtual English study community, in which students, of English majors and othermajors, are organized to carry out discussions so as to learn from each other and improve theirthinking. It is presupposed that it is a good way to integrate extracurricular discussion intoEnglish teaching activities in order to enhance students’development of thinking ability.The research context of this study was a network-based extracurricular learning programusing OICQ software as an online dialogue platform. The participants are 40 English majorsfrom Grade Two in Shandong Agricultural University in this study. Students were dividedinto two groups, namely experimental group and control group, 20 students in each grouprespectively. For the experimental group，the task is to carry out discussion with another 20non-English majors on given hot issues each weekend on OICQ Dialogic Learning Platform.The whole process is guided and organized by the researcher. For the control group, the taskis to carry out normal teaching activities, without participating in the online cross major chat.The research lasts 38 weeks. After the experiment, the changes of thinking on bothexperimental and control groups were tested. The evaluation includes the following threeaspects: evaluation on thinking level reflected in argumentative writing，evaluation onthinking reflected in speech contest and evaluation on critical thinking by the CaliforniaCritical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST). The analysis on the result indicates cross major online chat has a positive effect on thepromotion of English majors’thinking ability. The findings are as follows:(1) The score of thinking level reflected in argumentative writing of experimental group wassignificantly higher than that of control group.(2) The score of thinking level reflected in speech contest of experimental group wassignificantly higher than that of control group.(3) The total score in CCTST of experimental group was significantly higher than that ofcontrol group. Part of the index contrast was not statistically significant.In addition, interview indicates that the promotion of thinking level for English majorsare relevant to the following factors: cross major online chat can enlarge students’scope ofknowledge; cross major online chat can sharpen students’awareness of social culture theory;cross major online chat can improve students’English skill; cross major online chat canpromote students’interest of learning.Based on the experimental results, some implications have been found for Englishteaching as well as the improvement of students’thinking levels. Firstly, English majors’levelof thinking is comparatively low at present. With higher education，college students shouldhave higher level of thinking. However, this research indicated that students’thinking level,especially in the control group, was obviously poorer. Secondly，through teaching reform,students’thinking level can be improved. English teaching content should have breadth anddepth. The traditional teacher-centered method should be changed to stress students’dominantposition in teaching activities to cultivate independent learning ability according to their ownconditions and demands. Classroom teaching should be combined with the extracurricularpractice. Classroom teaching is to inspire and guide students to leave enough thinking space;extracurricular activities should be elaborately designed to lead students to the process ofself-study, reflection, practice and innovation. This study indicates cross-major online chat is aneffective extracurricular practice to promote students’thinking.