A Study Of Critical Thinking Disposition Of Senior High School Students Regarding English Proficiency And Gender

English Curriculum Standard for Senior High Schools(2017)has stated clearly that English teaching should attach great importance to cultivating students' logical thinking and critical thinking.High school students are at their golden age of thought developing,nevertheless,the cultivation of students' critical thinking in English teaching is relatively deficient due to traditional education methods,which cannot meet the requirements of English Curriculum Standard for Senior High Schools(2017).Therefore,an investigation into the current situation of senior high school students' critical thinking disposition and a description of its characteristics are helpful to students' understanding towards critical thinking.Additionally,a relatively thorough analysis of the possible influential factors to the current situation of their critical thinking disposition can help researchers to put forward pertinent suggestions to foster senior high school students' critical thinking.California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory(Chinese Version),translated,revised and compiled by Peng Meici,an expert from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University,is adopted in the present study,the reliability and validity of which have been verified.The participants are 288 students and 2 English teachers in Grade Two of NO.3 senior high school in Yantai.The present study has investigated the current situation of critical thinking disposition of senior high school students by qualitative and quantitative methods.Research questions are designed as follows:(1)What's the current situation of senior high school students' critical thinking disposition?(2)What are the differences between students' critical thinking disposition in terms of English proficiency and gender?(3)What are the possible factors leading to the current situation and differences of senior high school students' critical thinking disposition?EXCEL and SPSS19.0 are exploited to analyze the data.The results are as follows:(1)Senior high school students show a positive inclination towards the overall critical thinking disposition,but a few sub-scales have only achieved a medium level.(2)with relatively lower English proficiency in the overall critical thinking disposition and the sub-scales of systematicity,self-confidence and inquisitiveness.Male students tend to be more confident than female students,while females tend to have a stronger tendency towards maturity than males.(3)By way of interviewing the teachers and students,it is believed that there are many factors that may affect the current situation of students' critical thinking disposition and the differences,such as students' unwillingness to think,teachers' insufficient knowledge of critical thinking disposition,and family and school environment inconducive to fostering critical thinking disposition.Different performance in English class may give rise to the differences of critical thinking disposition in terms of English proficiency.The personality variation and the imbalanced cognitive development may result in the differences in terms of gender.The present study puts forward some suggestions for teachers,students and schools to help senior high school students improve their critical thinking disposition in accordance with the results of the survey.