A Study On The Impact Of Curriculum On English Majors’ Critical Thinking Skills

In the latest 20 years, the cultivation of critical thinking has become a hot topic and major goal of higher education in western countries, especially in America. The concept of critical thinking was introduced into China in 1980 s and domestic research on critical thinking mainly concentrates on medical science. However, in recent years,foreign language world has conducted a large amount of research on critical thinking skills of foreign language students since Huang Yuanshen proposed the “absence of critical thinking” in foreign language students. The research has focused on theoretical construction of critical thinking and empirical exploration of how to develop critical thinking in foreign language teaching. But when it comes to the factors that influence the cultivation of critical thinking, relative studies lag behind.Curriculum plays an important role in the development of talents in higher education.But there are inadequate studies on the relationship between curriculum and critical thinking ability.This study explores the relationship between English curriculum and critical thinking of English students through quantitative and qualitative method. Three questions in the following are to be addressed:(1) What is the general situation of English students’ critical thinking skills?(2) What are internal differences of critical thinking in different grades of English students?(3) What role does curriculum play in the cultivation of critical thinking?In this study, 150 English students from different grades are invited as subjects.45 of the subjects are freshmen with 50 sophomores and 55 juniors. Critical Thinking Skills Test(Ye Yuzhu’s Version) is first employed to figure out the overall situation of critical thinking skills of English students. And then, the training plan of the university where subjects study is investigated to survey the condition of English curriculum. The curriculum is classified into skill-based courses and content-based courses according to their attribute and characteristics. Finally, an interview is further carried out to figure out the relationship between English curriculum and criticalthinking skillsThe study illustrated following findings:(1) Despite of a minority of poor critical thinking, the overwhelming majority of English students have eligible critical thinking skills.(2) There exist internal differences of critical thinking in English majors of different grades. Juniors rank the first, freshmen rank the second, while sophomores rank the third. In subscale skills of critical thinking, sophomores seem good at explanation, and freshmen do better in hypothesis and induction, while juniors are better in evaluation.(3) English curriculum influences the cultivation of critical thinking. And content-based courses are more effective in the development of critical thinking than skills-based courses. Therefore, educators can promote the cultivation of critical thinking from the perspective of the content and types of various courses in future studies.