A Study On The Relationship Between Critical Thinking Ability And Classroom Questioning Of English Language Teaching Majors

Classroom questioning is a frequently used method in teaching. The appropriatequestioning is significant not only in the student enthusiasm on the classroom participationand the improvement of the classroom efficiency, but also in stimulating the development ofcritical thinking ability. Thus，a lot of academic studies on classroom questioning have beencarried out by researchers in China and western countries, most of them focused on theaspects such as the categories and levels of classroom questions, the use of classroomquestioning strategies and factors that affect questioning.Attracting more and more attention in educational field in domestic and abroad, criticalthinking plays an indeed essential role in the cultivation of student creative spirit as well asthe improvement of student intellectual development. However, according to the researchesconducted by previous researchers, there exists an ‘absence of critical thinking’ in Englishmajors in China.This study applies the theory about classroom questioning and that of critical thinking,attempts to explore the relationship between both of them. With the hypothesis that the levelof critical thinking ability determines the quality of classroom questioning, the author tries toanswer the following research questions:1) What is the current situation of critical thinking ofEnglish teaching majors?2) What kinds of classroom questions do English Teaching majorsin lower and higher critical thinking groups ask?3) What’s the relationship between criticalthinking and classroom questioning?The study was conducted in three stages. It involved135fourth-year English Teachingmajors as participants. Through the descriptive statistics, frequency analysis and correlationanalysis with SPSS13.0for the data, and the using of quantitative analysis for theclassification of questions, the study got the answers as follows:1) the critical thinkingability of English teaching majors is at a very low level,2) English teaching majors askvarious kinds of questions. High-cognitive-level questions are posed by students with highcritical thinking ability, and low-cognitive-level questions are asked by low critical thinkingability students and3) there is a positive correlation between critical thinking ability and the level of classroom questioning.With some findings in this study, the author also indicated some pedagogical suggestionsfor teachers, learners and teacher training programs.