A Study Of The Correlation Between Perceptions Of English Classroom Environment And Critical Thinking Disposition Of Senior Middle School Students

According to New Curriculum Standards,it is stated that English teaching should attach importance to facilitating students to form the habit of thinking in English,which highlights the importance of English thinking quality.Furthermore,critical thinking is regarded as important in thinking quality.Besides,social environment plays a significant role in developing higher-order thinking by social activity and students spend most of their time in the classroom learning from primary school to university,meaning that classroom environment plays an important role in students' learning and stimulating their critical thinking.The author investigates 157 Senior Two students who are selected from four classes of the same school to collect the information about their perceptions of English classroom environment,critical thinking disposition and the correlation between students' perceptions of English classroom environment and their critical thinking disposition with two questionnaires,that is,Middle School English Classroom Environment Inventory(MSECEI)to assess the English classroom environment in senior middle school and Chinese Version of California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory(CCTDI-CV)to investigate students' critical thinking disposition.Besides,the qualitative method including interview and classroom observation is used to further explore the reasons leading to the differences of students' perceptions of English classroom environment and critical thinking disposition.According to the survey,the following findings can be summarized:(1)Senior middle school students have middle disposition towards overall critical thinking;there exists significant gender difference in the scale of self-confidence;in terms of four groups,statistical results show significant differences in overall critical thinking disposition and its five scales of open-mindedness,systematicity,self-confidence,inquisitiveness and maturity.(2)Senior middle school students perceive favorably in the whole English classroom environment and its five sub-scales;the independent sample t-test shows that there are no significant gender differences in the perceptions of whole English classroom environment as well as five sub-scales;in terms of four groups,there exists statistical significance in the three sub-scales of English classroom environment,that is,teacher support,student cohesiveness and class order.(3)Concerning the correlation between students' perceptions of English classroom environment and critical thinking disposition,the strongest independent predictor is task orientation but in a negative direction.Student cohesiveness and class order are also independent predictors of critical thinking disposition in a positive direction;the five scales of MSECEI together accounts for a medium amount of variance in critical thinking disposition,meaning that English classroom environment is beneficial to critical thinking disposition.Based on findings discussed above,some pedagogical implications for English teachers can be concluded,that is,creating a constructivism-based English classroom environment;promoting stronger disposition towards inquisitiveness via stimulating students' internal motivation;developing critical thinking disposition via creating better English classroom environment.