A Study On The Development Of Students’ Critical Thinking In Reading Teaching

In the field of second language acquisition (SLA), the emphasis on applying various strategies to obtain information from texts has always been a main task in English reading teaching. However, there exists a "vacancy" in the cultivation of students’ Critical Thinking (CT) in English teaching at home. Thus a problem arises in this situation that students are often accustomed to accept the information of a reading text without analyzing, questioning, or putting forward their own opinion. As more and more researches focus on CT development in English reading teaching, many researchers point out the necessity of conducting Critical Reading or Critical Literacy (as it is frequently referred to) to raise students’critical awareness and cultivate their critical thinking. But the empirical researches on how to implement CL to cultivate students’CT and its effectiveness in English reading course are still rare.Traced back to Freire (1970), critical literacy approach was used to develop his students’power and consciousness to use language as an aid to think critically. Wallace’s Critical Reading Model (2003) based on Fairclough’s studies of critical discourse analysis is a development of critical literacy approach. This study explored critical literacy-oriented English reading teaching for one semester, aiming at enhancing students’critical awareness, critical thinking and English reading achievement as well. Given the characteristics of the experimental context, the present study is fundamentally based on the Four Resources Model of Critical Literacy put forward by Luke and Freebody (1999). Meanwhile, McLaughlin&Allen (2002)’s framework of teaching critical literacy strategies is adopted to guide the reading teaching practice.84subjects in the experiment are non-English major freshmen from two natural classes both with42students in the School of Humanity in Ningxia University. One class is randomly chosen as the experimental class (EC) and the other class was the control class (CC). CC was instructed with the traditional grammar translation teaching approach, while EC was instructed with a critical literacy orientation. Washington State University’s Critical Thinking Rubric (WSU CT Rubric,2006), reflective essays, Stimulated recall interviews (SRIs), and three reading test papers were used in this research.Based on the relevant literature about CT and CL, the statistical analyses and some observations of this study, the following conclusions are obtained. Firstly, students show a development in their critical awareness after the experiment. They gain a clear understanding of critical literacy and can reflect on the texts in course book from a critical perspective. Secondly, compared to the results of the CT Rubric before experiment, students’critical thinking in EC is improved in general. Critical literacy lessons could cultivate students’critical thinking. Thirdly, compared to CC, EC students show a significant progress in post-test, though there is no big difference in mid-test. Thus critical literacy-oriented teaching could better improve students’ English reading achievement.The results of the study showed that critical literacy approach of reading teaching could raise students’critical awareness, cultivate their CT and improve their English reading achievement. It is also suggested that more vivid materials which are directly relevant to students’lives could be employed to stimulate their motivation and active participation.