A Study On The Impacts Of Critical Thinking Skills On Senior High Students’ English Writing Capacity

With the development of the reform and opening-up of our country, the communicationbetween countries is increasingly frequent, so as the output of information in English. As acommunication channel English writing is an important indicator to measure students’ all-roundcapabilities of English learning. Writing is a process of independent analysis and creativity, andthe role of thinking cannot be neglect. However, researches on the methods of improving Englishwriting in the perspective of critical thinking at home are rare, and most of the studies are confinedto English major students in high school.The subjects of this study were30senior high students who are involved in internationaleducation program from the affiliated high school of Shanxi university. The author tries toexplore the relationship between critical thinking and English writing capacity, so she has done aCCTDI questionnaire for senior high students, and observed the training of critical thinking skillsin their writing class. The teaching materials they use are “American literature” and “Americanhistory”. The author collected their writing quiz paper and analyzed with the foreign teacher, thengive suggestions on thinking and correction every week. This thesis primarily aims at solvingthe following questions:1) How is the critical thinking disposition distributed of students fromInternational education program?2) What’s the relationship between senior high students’ criticalthinking and English writing proficiency?3) How to improve senior high students’ Englishwriting proficiency by using critical thinking skills effectively?The instruments used in the study are California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventoryquestionnaire, Interview and two writing tasks. All the data were processed and analyzed by SPSS17.0and Excel software. Major findings indicate that:1) The current critical thinking dispositionshows that the average analysis level is prominent, all the students have a strong inquisitivenessand their maturity level is high;2) There is a positive correlation between critical thinking skillsand writing proficiency;3) For students from international education program, there are threeeffective stages: critical thinking theory learning, practice and consolidation by reading novels andshort stories, analyze or discuss essay writing in groups.This thesis presents the following implications for English teaching of international educationprogram. Firstly, all the English teachers should have a clear understanding of critical thinking skills and help students learn to think critically. Secondly, a concerted effort needs to be made toassure that all students, regardless of achievement level in a period, be given the opportunity tolearn to think critically. Thirdly, all the English classes need more critical thinking language andopen-ended questions so as to encourage independent cognitive development and reasoning skillsin students. Finally, Critical thinking should become an organizing core for international educationprogram.