An Experimental Study On Developing Critical Thinking Skills In English Teaching For Senior High School Students

The teaching content of critical thinking focuses on the critical thinking skills such asself-examination, summarization, assumption, reasoning and evaluation, etc. In view of thestress on consensus in traditional history, the over-emphasis on instrumental function ofEnglish and the neglect of its humanity as well, our English teaching pays little attention tothe development of senior high school students’ critical thinking ability, therefore they arecomparatively weak in critical thinking ability and don’t meet the requirement of theCurriculum Standards and social demands for qualified personnel. Consequently, the researchon how to foster the critical thinking ability of senior high school students is boththeoretically and practically significant.The senior high school stage is not only conducive to the students’ formation of the outlookon life and the world view, but also to their development of critical thinking ability. As thedomestic and foreign research practice shows, except from opening a special subject onlogical thinking to strengthen critical thinking ability, the integration of critical thinking andsubject teaching is also a desirable option. The Senior English Curriculum Standardsexplicitly list the training of students’ problem-analyzing and solving ability and criticalthinking ability, alongside the English-applying ability in social interaction and informationcollecting and processing ability, as three key teaching domains. As an important part ofsenior education, the teaching of English reading is helpful for students’ development ofthinking ability for the texts of which are rich in epochal character, humanity, interest andinquiry, etc. The paper, with an aim to develop students’ critical thinking ability, attempts toinstruct students critical thinking skills in the teaching of English reading, such as predicting,analyzing, querying, inferring, summarizing, evaluating, to not only focus on the attitude andintention of the authors, but also appreciate the wording, phrasing and building of the textsand get an in-depth comprehension.On the case investigation and analysis of the overall critical thinking ability of students inYichun senior high school in Jiangxi province, the paper proposes teaching solutions todevelop students’ critical thinking ability and with the application of relative quantitativequestionnaire surveys home and abroad testifies their effectiveness after a series of experimental teaching practice. With the reading texts from NSEC (New Senior English forChina) as teaching content, the paper gives scope to their linguistic privilege in word and textand stresses on student-based text comprehension and expansion of thinking in practicalresearch, with a purpose to change traditional grammar-emphasized reading teaching into athinking-activating one in which students critically accept information, appreciate andevaluate the reading texts, and finally generate creative output. The conclusion of the papershows that the guidance of critical thinking skills in the teaching of English reading is feasibleand effective for the development of students’ critical thinking ability.