Investigation Into The Relationship Between Critical Thinking And English Autonomous Learning Of Non-English Majors

According to the current “Long-term Education Reform and Development Plan(2010-2020)” published by Chinese Ministry of Education, the higher education system reform takes cultivating innovative talents as a goal and takes cultivating college students' critical thinking as the core in the teaching research. Early in the 1990 s, the foreign scholars put forward an opinion that schools or universities should cultivate college students' critical thinking which is a serious problem need to be solved. This study adopts an empirical study to explore the whole level of critical thinking disposition and critical thinking skills, and then further explore the relationship among critical thinking, autonomous learning and English achievement.This study adopts random sampling as research methods to select 350 non-English majors in a University of Science & Technology. The researcher chooses Chinese Version of California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory(CCTDI)(Luo Qingxu, 2001) and Chinese Version of California Critical Thinking Skills Test(CCTST)(Peng Meici, 2004) as research tools to measure the two dimensions of college students' critical thinking. Besides, the researcher also uses Autonomous English Learning Test(AELT) based on three-dimensional constructs(Lin Lilan, 2009) to measure the state of college students' English autonomous learning. By sorting and screening questionnaires, there are totally 297 valid questionnaires. Quantitative data is statistically analyzed by using Social Science Statistical Software SPSS16.0. By the way of descriptive statistical analysis and independent T-test samples, the researcher explores the whole level of critical thinking disposition and critical thinking skills, and analysis whether gender or grades have a significant difference on critical thinking and autonomous learning. Then the researcher explores the relationship among critical thinking disposition, autonomous learning and English achievement, and the relationship among critical thinking skills, autonomous learning and English achievement by the way of Pearson Correlation Analysis. Finally, the researcher adopts multiple linear regressions to build the correlation model of them.The study has made the following conclusions:(1) College students have a moderate level of Critical Thinking Disposition in the study. There is no significant difference between male and female, freshmen and sophomore on Critical Thinking Disposition. College students have a low level of Critical Thinking Skills. There is no significant difference between male and female on Critical Thinking Skills. On contrary, there is a significant difference between freshmen and sophomore on Critical Thinking Skills. As for the Critical Thinking Disposition, the dimension of analyticity has highest average score which means that the most of subjects are at high level on this dimension. While the dimension of truth seeking and systematicity has lowest average scores which suggest that the subjects have a low ability of truth seeking and systematicity.(2) Pearson Correlations among critical thinking dispositions, autonomous learning and English score of CET-4 of the subjects show that there is a significant positive correlation between autonomous learning and score of CET-4 in the study. What's more, there is significant positive correlation between critical thinking dispositions and score of CET-4 of the subjects in the study. There is also a significant positive correlation between autonomous learning and critical thinking dispositions and their Pearson correlation coefficient is significant in the study. A conclusion can be drawn that critical thinking dispositions, autonomous learning and score of CET-4 are positive significant correlation with each other.(3) Pearson Correlations among critical thinking skills, autonomous learning and English score of CET-4 of the subjects show that there are positive correlations between critical thinking skills and scores of CET-4, but their correlation has no significantly positive correlation in the study. What's more, there is also significant positive correlation between Critical Thinking Skills and Autonomous Learning, and their Pearson correlation coefficient is significant in the study. What's more, the correlation between English scores of CET-4 and Autonomous Learning is significant positive correlation as well as the findings above in the study.(4) The results of multiple linear regressions indicate that autonomous learning plays a partial mediating effect in the relationship among critical thinking, autonomous learning and English achievement.