A Study On Critical Thinking Of Preschool English Majors Of Vocational Schools

Critical thinking aims to make a profound, independent and comprehensive reflection of one’s beliefs. It is vital to break the original thinking set. Only when we break the original model of our own thinking, can valuable and creative questions be posed, allowing us to become the creative elite. Therefore, the priority is to encourage the spirit of critical thinking in order to cultivate the creative elite.Our aim is to investigate the situation of critical thinking in English majors. In order to cultivate and enhance their critical thinking qualities, we must investigate the state of their critical thinking and evaluate their skills meaningfully. In addition, the research can provide reference for the future developments in English teaching.The thesis selects 180 preschool English major students from a vocational school as the subject, adopting the quantitative and qualitative analysis methods to survey the current situation in critical thinking disposition and critical thinking skills as well as attempting to answer the following research questions.1. What are the general levels of critical thinking disposition and critical thinking skills of preschool English majors in vocational schools?2. What are the differences in critical thinking disposition and critical thinking skills of preschool English majors from different grades?3. Are there any correlations between critical thinking disposition and critical thinking skills, among the dimensions of critical thinking disposition and among the sub-skills of critical thinking skills of preschool English majors in vocational schools?According to the survey results, the following conclusions have been drawn: Firstly, the subjects’ critical thinking disposition has not reached neutral value. Only open-mindedness has a positive trend of development among its seven dimensions; the subjects’ critical thinking skills are at the weak level. Except interpretation, all the other sub-skills have not reached the positive value. Secondly, the subjects from different grades haven’t shown significant differences in critical thinking disposition, but shown differences in analysis, evaluation and explanation of critical thinking skills. Finally, there are no correlations between critical thinking disposition and critical thinking skills; among the seven dimensions of critical thinking disposition, maturity plays an important role and has positive correlations with the other dimensions, truth-seeking is positively correlated with analyticity and systematicity, and self-confidence is positively correlated with systematicity but, is negatively correlated with analyticity; the six sub-skills of critical thinking skills are positively correlated with each other.In general, the overall level of critical thinking of preschool English majors is low. In the future work, effective measures should be adopted in order to strengthen the training of students’ critical thinking and improve their spirits of critical thinking.