An Empirical Study Of Non-english Majors' Critical Thinking Ability In Oral English Teaching

Critical thinking is the diagnostic judgement of objects according to specific criteria.With the evolution of globalization,college education pays more attention to critical thinking ability,which is intimately related to cultivating innovative talents to meet the needs of information society.Those who lack critical thinking ability are more likely to be struck by multi-information and further lose the ability to distinguish.This gives rise to the dissimilation of knowledge and pushing themselves to become slaves to pseudo knowledge.As a result,it is essential to cultivate their critical thinking ability.Nowadays,with the rise of our country's economic status and the development of diplomacy,the social demand for advanced talents mastering oral communication competence is increasing.If college students are in possession of high-level oral communicative competence,it definitely increases their society competitiveness.It is of utter importance to develop college students' oral proficiency in English teaching.However,teachers pay more attention to the accuracy of vocabulary and grammar,and neglect the cultivation of students' critical thinking ability,which results in a series of problems: students are passive when they express their own viewpoints;they intend to follow the teacher's thinking mode to deliver their ideas;and they are unable to analyze and explore topics on their own.Based on the theory of critical thinking,the study aims at probing the impacts on participants' critical thinking ability in oral English teaching.The author manages to elaborate the following two questions:1.What is the general level of non-English majors' critical thinking ability?2.What is the effect of oral English teaching on non-English majors' critical thinking ability?Eighty students in Qilu Normal University are chosen as participants for this study.The participants are freshmen who are selected randomly from the School ofComputer majoring in Computer Science and Technology.The PETS-3 speaking test is adopted to assess the participants' speaking proficiency before and after the experiment.The Chinese version of California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory and California Critical Thinking Skills are used to test their general level of critical thinking ability in pre-test and post-test.The main findings are listed:1.The general level of non-English majors' critical thinking ability is not high.2.Non-English majors' critical thinking ability does improve in oral English teaching.The author puts forward some pedagogical implications on cultivating students' critical thinking ability on the basis of the conclusion.By the same token,the limitations and suggestions for future correlative studies are proposed as well.