A Study Of The Application Of Critical Thinking In Senior High School English Reading Teaching

The 21^st century is known as a knowledge age as well as information age.Its main features are the knowledge innovation and technological innovation.With the continued social life and the economic globalization,more and more people focus on how to get and process useful information effectively.Those who do not have the ability to think independently and process information properly will eventually be eliminated,which needs us to have the critical ability to analyze,evaluate and react to information,and eventually make the proper judgment and decision.That is critical thinking ability.The middle school stage is the key period of forming students'world outlook,view of life and values.Students need to make proper judgment on plenty of information they have read with critical thinking.Cultivating students'critical thinking ability can start from critical reading teaching.For Chinese students,they should not only have a certain amount of vocabulary and grammar,but also have good comprehension and thinking ability.The author finds that some students understand the literal meaning and main content of the article and passively accept everything without questioning the views of the text.They are used to finding answers directly in the article.They can answer some simple questions correctly,but they will feel helpless when they encounter some mentally challenging tasks.It shows that students have not formed the sensitivity of language.In traditional English reading class,teachers lead students to get the basic information of a passage,which neither provides more opportunities for students to make further analysis and discussion of the passage,nor applies specific reading strategy training.Critical reading is a kind of high level reading activity,which emphasizes that in the process of reading,readers should analyze,question,evaluate and put forward their own opinions on the information.Teachers guide students to analyze the reading materials with critical reading teaching,which is helpful for students to change the way of thinking and to cultivate students'critical thinking.With the cultivation of critical thinking,students'consciousness for the use of critical reading strategy will also be enhanced to improve students'ability of analyzing reading materials.There are many related researches on cultivating critical thinking and critical reading ability at home and abroad,but in China,the practical research on the combination of critical reading with subject education has only gradually increased in recent years.Many scholars research the feasibility and effectiveness of critical reading teaching on college students.There are not enough researches focusing on senior high school students.Therefore,in order to indicate the effectiveness of critical reading teaching in senior high school English reading teaching,the author conducts this research basing on Constructivism Theory.In this research,the author chose senior high school students in Grade Two as research subjects and adopted the experimental method to carry out this research.During the three-month experiment,the author tried to answer the following questions“What is the main teaching method on English reading in senior high school at present and what problems exist in senior high school English reading?”,“What factors cause the problems of senior high school students'English reading”,and“What effect does critical reading teaching have on senior high school students'English reading?”At the start of the experiment,the author tested the English reading ability of students in the experiment class and the control class?pre-test?and analyzed the results to make sure that these two classes chosen by the author were parallel classes.Then,students in the experiment class were required to do a pre-questionnaire and pre-interview.During the three-month experiment,the author taught the experiment class with critical reading teaching.First,the author trained students'critical reading strategies including the introduction of reading strategies,specialized training and comprehensive training.Next,the author conducted critical reading teaching.The control class still used the traditional teaching method.Three month later,these two classes were required to take an English reading ability test?post-test?.Besides,students in the experiment class also needed to take post-questionnaire and post-interview.The result of the tests shows that the reading performance of the experiment class is better than that of the control class.Students'performances in critical reading teaching class and the results of the questionnaires and interviews also indicate that students'attitude toward English reading class and their thinking mode have changed.Students'critical thinking ability has developed.Meanwhile,critical reading teaching also cultivates students'awareness for the use of critical reading strategy,which improves students'critical reading ability.This research indicates that the effective application of critical reading in senior high school English teaching can effectively improve students'critical thinking ability and reading comprehensive ability.