Research On The Effects Of English Writing Training On High School Students' Critical Thinking Based On Language-Thought Theories

Writing is a highly intensive activity of thinking. The writing process can be a good manifestation of the level of learners' cognitive ability. Critical thinking is the essential element throughout the whole writing process, from understanding a topic,working out the framework, writing the paragraphs to revising the whole text.However, based on the current situation of English teaching in many Chinese high schools, students are taught to write following the structure of model essays with little or no modification. In argumentative writing, in particular, apart from the language mistakes, high school students' compositions commonly reveal such illogical problems as unclear conceptual definitions, ambiguous arguments and irrational inference, which all derive from the lack of critical thinking. The deficiency of students' critical thinking revealed in their writing process arises from the influence of traditional English teaching methods. In a typical writing class, the English teacher tends to focus on language points and grammar rules rather than on the development of students' critical thinking. Therefore, it is of great importance to cultivate high school students' critical thinking ability in English writing classes.This study is based on a research on the effects of English writing training on high school students' critical thinking in the light of language-thought theories, which suggests that critical thinking has an influence on students' English writing ability. On the basis of critical thinking theories and the relationship between thinking and writing, the study attempts to investigate the high school students' current general level of critical thinking, find out the correlation between critical thinking ability and writing proficiency, and study the effect of integrating critical thinking into English writing training on the development of students' critical thinking ability and English writing ability.The study was conducted in two Senior 1 parallel classes in Guangzhou No. 17 Middle School. California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory(CCTDI) is adopted to study the high school students' general condition of critical dispositions.Cambridge Critical Thinking Skills Assessment(CCTSA) is the instrument used to compare the level of critical thinking skills between the experimental class and the control class after a period of English writing training. The students' writing scores and their test results are analyzed on SPSS 21.0. Results show that the high school students' critical thinking is on a moderate level and there is a positive and significant correlation between the students' critical thinking and their writing proficiency.Finally, ways to cultivate critical thinking in high school English writing classes are discussed and pedagogical implications are proposed.