A Study Of English Majors’Critical Thinking Abilities Under The Reading-commenting-writing Teaching Model

In recent years, the studies concerning critical thinking have been increasing rapidly in China. Even so, empirical researches into the development status of English majors’critical thinking after the innovation of teaching model are few. And again, empirical studies on English majors’critical thinking abilities under the new teaching model that is Reading-commenting-writing Teaching model are scarce. Taking the Input Hypothesis, the Interaction Hypothesis and the Output Hypothesis as its theoretical foundations, and trying to observe the English majors’critical thinking by analyzing their English argumentative compositions, the author in the present study aims to investigate the development status of English majors’critical thinking abilities under Conventional Teaching Model and under Reading-commenting-writing Teaching Model respectively as well as whether there are some advantages of Reading-commenting-writing Teaching Model in improving English majors’critical thinking abilities.The author conducts an empirical study by using composition analysis, SPSS17.0statistical analysis and interview as a complementary approach. The participants are the first year English majors and the third year English majors separately under Reading-commenting-writing Teaching Model and Conventional Teaching Model at a key normal university. The English argumentative compositions written by the three group students are randomly selected33from each group totaling99English argumentative compositions as the corpus of the current study. Through analyzing the collected data and related materials, the major findings of the study are as follows:(1) Through analyzing the English argumentative compositions written by the first year English majors and the third year English majors under Conventional Teaching Model, the present author found that with the progress of the grade, the English majors’critical thinking reflected in their argumentative compositions has got great improvement in one parameter of standards (i.e. relevance) for assessing cognitive part of critical thinking while in the other three parameters:explicitness, sufficiency and coherence the English majors only show slight improvement. On the whole, there is no significant difference between critical thinking abilities of the first year and the third year English majors under Conventional Teaching Model.(2) Through analyzing the English argumentative compositions written by the first year English majors and the third year English majors under Reading-commenting-writing Teaching Model, the present author found that with the progress of the grade, the English majors’critical thinking reflected in their argumentative compositions has considerably improved in two parameters:relevance and coherence, while in the other two parameters explicitness and sufficiency the English majors’critical thinking abilities just present no significant difference.(3) Through analyzing the English argumentative compositions written by the third year English majors under Conventional Teaching Model and Reading-commenting-writing Teaching Model respectively, the present author found that there is no significant difference in those four parameters of standards between the two groups of English majors on critical thinking although the critical thinking of the English majors under Reading-commenting-writing Teaching Model is slightly better. There are some advantages of Reading-commenting-writing teaching model in improving English majors’critical thinking abilities.The study attempts to enrich the existing research on critical thinking abilities and to make a contribution to the related studies in China. The research results show that Reading-commenting-writing Teaching Model has a positive effect on the cultivation of English majors’ critical thinking abilities, which can offer the reference for the innovation of teaching model in the future and be instructive for further study of critical thinking in a larger scale.