An Experimental Study Of Using English Writing To Develop Junior High School Students' Critical Thinking Ability

Critical thinking comes from questioning and it is a high-level intellectual process that makes correct and reasonable evaluation of the background,source and nature of the information by means of questions,analysis and synthesis.In the process of global integration,the cultivation of critical thinking becomes more and more important.The methods of cultivating are various.Some scholars suggest that writing is an effective method on cultivating critical thinking.Cultivating critical thinking through English writing not only enhances the critical thinking,but also improves the level of writing.According to research purposes and research subjects,this thesis has amended the cultivation model of critical thinking which is proposed by Ma Yingxin.And the revised version is named as the writing-based critical thinking cultivation model.However,the experimental study of cultivating critical thinking is rare and the subjects of junior high school students are few.So the purpose of this thesis tries to use the experimental study to find out whether the writing-based critical thinking cultivation model towards junior high school students is useful.This paper has chosen two classes of Shijiazhuang's junior high school as its subjects.In this thesis,the definition of critical thinking is mainly about the high-level intellectual process of evaluating information through analysis and synthesis.The connotation of critical thinking includes two parts: critical thinking disposition and critical thinking skill.In order to test the overall situation of two classes' critical thinking,this paper has adopted two methods.One is the Chinese version of critical thinking disposition inventory and the other is the rubric of qualitative critical thinking skills which is invented by the Florida University.This paper has taken the experimental study.The period of this experiment is a whole semester.Before the experiment,the two classes have no significant difference on the level of critical thinking.During the experiment,this paper has adopted the teaching model of writing-based critical thinking cultivation.The results of the experiment have shown that both the critical thinking disposition and critical thinking skill of the tested subjects have been improved after the experiment.In other words,the writing-based critical thinking cultivation model has effects on cultivating critical thinking.