Effects Of Focused Freewriting On Students' Critical Thinking

In recent years,the importance of fostering students' critical thinking has drawn much concern from the scholars and researchers in the field of education.However,many studies claim that traditional EFL teaching in China merely attaches emphasis on training students' language skills but neglects the cultivating of critical thinking.Especially in the field of English writing teaching,many researchers have pointed out that students' English writings are always in a fixed pattern with the simple structure and vacuous content,most of the writings are in a state of illogic and deficient in rational and sufficient arguments,that is to say,students' English writings are deficient in critical thinking.Therefore,it is crucial for EFL teachers to find appropriate writing teaching methods which can not only improve students' language skills but also put much importance on the cultivating of students' critical thinking.Freewriting,as a kind of prewriting strategy,which separates the producing process from the editing process,has been widely applied and studied in the field of writing teaching in western countries.However,few studies related to freewriting have been done in China.This study attempts to integrate focused freewriting as a regular teaching method in the non-English major students' English reading and writing course to explore the following three research questions:1)What effects will focused freewriting have on non-English major students' critical thinking in English writing?2)What effects will focused freewriting have on non-English major students' overall English writing proficiency?3)What are non-English major students' attitudes towards freewriting?There are 66 first-year non-English major postgraduate students from two natural classes in Lanzhou Jiaotong University chosen as the subjects to participate in the one-term teaching experiment.The author randomly chooses one class as experimental group with 32 students and the other one as control group composed of 34 students.In the experimental group,students are taught by integrating focused freewriting exercises in their English reading and writing course,and the students in control group are instructed without this method.Students' pre-test and post-test writings are then compared and analyzed in terms of critical thinking and overall writing proficiency by conducting independent samples t-test and paired samples t-test.Besides,a questionnaire is conducted in the experimental group to investigate students' attitudes towards freewriting.This study employs quantitative and qualitative research method,all data are processed with the help of SPSS 16.0,and the sample texts are analyzed.The major research findings are as follows:Firstly,compared with control group,students in experimental group have significantly improved their critical thinking in two of the parameters of standards for assessing critical thinking that are relevance and coherence,while there is no statistically significant influence on the improvement of the other two parameters that are explicitness and sufficiency.Secondly,focused freewriting has a positive effect on the improvement of students' overall English writing proficiency.Experimental group students have significantly improved their overall writing proficiency compared with control group.Finally,from the results of the questionnaire,it is found that most of the non-English major students hold positive attitudes towards freewriting.Based on these findings,this research is expected to propose some suggestions and implications for future EFL writing instruction as follows: 1)EFL writing teaching should attach great importance to fostering of students' critical thinking rather than giving central attention solely to language skills.2)the integration of focused freewriting exercises in regular English reading and writing course has positive effects on the development of students' critical thinking.In order to significantly improve students' critical thinking from all of the parameters,more extensive use of the focused freewriting treatment and relatively longer intervention period should be involved.3)Freewriting,as a kind of writing training method which separates the process of producing from the process of revising,can make writing less blocked.Therefore,it is helpful for students to improve their English writing skills,the confidence and the sense of achievement in learning English.In addition,the flexibility of freewriting enables it can be integrated into different English teaching context.