The Study Of The Cultivation Of Students’ Critical Thinking In College English Writing Classes

Cultivation of innovative talents is an important goal of quality education,critical thinking is the foundation of innovation capabilities. The cultivation ofstudents’ critical thinking is the emphasis of most countries. It has become aspecialized training courses for students in Harvard, Yale and other famousuniversities. Critical thinking was brought into China in mid-eighties of twentiescentury, since then, domestic scholars in various fields paid more and more attentionto it. In resent years, applied Linguistics researchers also noted the lack of students’critical thinking during their learning process. With the deepening of the researches onlinguistics and foreign language teaching, the cultivation of critical thinking hasgradually integrated into foreign language teaching. Many scholars and foreignlanguage experts have recognized the importance of cultivating college students’critical thinking ability in college English classes. Researchers have started empiricalresearch to explore the correlation between critical thinking and teaching. How todevelop students’ critical thinking in hearing, reading and writing classes has becomea hot topic.Writing is a kind of high intensity activity of thinking. The writing process canbe a good indicator of the level of students’ thinking ability. Critical thinking isactually the essential element throughout the whole writing process. In China, writingclasses haven’t been paid enough attention on the cultivation of students’ criticalthinking. With the influence of the traditional teaching method in our country,students always would like to recite model essay and apply template when writing.Most of the teachers only pay attention to language using and correcting grammaticalerrors. Especially in argumentative writing, students often can’t find proper content towrite. Content of article is boring, demonstration is unclear and relations between sentences and sections is lack of logical.The domestic empirical researches on correlations between non-English majorstudents’ critical thinking and their writing proficiency is not enough. How to developstudents’ critical thinking in writing classes is relatively few. The author believe,writing teaching and critical thinking cultivating can be well integrated. Students’critical thinking can be cultivated in writing classes and the development of criticalthinking may affect students’ writing proficiency positively. So, based on studying thegeneral level of non-English college students’ critical thinking, the author tried tointegrate the cultivation of critical thinking into English writing classes, and explorethe effects on students’ English writing proficiency by cultivating critical thinking inEnglish writing classes. Moreover, based on the case study, this paper also providedthe methods and strategies of how to cultivate students’ critical thinking in Englishwriting classes.This study mainly focused on the following issues:1.What is the general level of college students’ critical thinking?2. What is the relationship between students’ critical thinking and their Englishwriting proficiency?3. What is the effect of the teaching method of integrating cultivation of criticalthinking in English writing classes?The study was conducted in a non-English major sophomore class in JilinUniversity. California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory and California criticalthinking skills test were used as the measurement tools before and after theexperiment to measure student’ critical thinking in two dimensions as well as thechanges of students’ critical thinking after the experimental test. Experimental resultsshowed that non-English major college students’ critical thinking is below the average.They are lack of analysis, evaluate and inference ability. Students’ critical thinkingand writing proficiency showed a significant and positive correlation. During tenweeks’ experiment, students’ critical thinking and writing proficiency have beenimproved significantly. It demonstrated that the cultivation of students’ criticalthinking in writing class can not only develop students’ critical thinking, but alsoimprove students’ writing proficiency. At the end of the experiment, the students who were interviewed in the study showed great satisfaction for this writing class. Finally,the author proposed ways and strategies for cultivating critical thinking in CollegeEnglish Writing Classes.