An Investigation Of Questioning In High School English Reading Class From The Perspective Of Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is one of key competences that are of common international and domestic concern.The High School English Curriculum Standard(2017 edition)clearly states that it's necessary to cultivate students' key competence in English discipline.Language is the outer shell of thinking,as a special language subject,English is responsible for cultivating students' critical thinking.How to cultivate it in English teaching has become the focus of theoreticians and teachers.This study takes critical thinking as the starting point,based on the teacher's questioning in high school English reading teaching,uses classroom observation,questionnaires,and teacher interviews to investigate the current status of teacher questioning and critical thinking training in high school English reading teaching.The characteristics of questioning are explored from three aspects: the strategy of questioning,the method of answering the question,and the content of the question.The study found that teachers value the cultivation of critical thinking,but their understanding of concepts is not systematic.Teacher questioning has different emphasis on critical thinking skills and critical thinking dispositions.In terms of skills,questioning focus on cultivating interpretation and analysis.There is insufficient attention to evaluation and self-regulation skills.In terms of dispositions,questioning has a lack of attention to curiosity and self-confidence.The study finds that probing is the most commonly used questioning strategy for questions pointed to critical thinking.More than half of these questions are answered by nominating,and the number of questions for literal understanding is the highest.At the same time,there are two findings in the analysis of data.First,compared with the teacher's teaching age,the systematic study of critical thinking has a greater impact on whether teachers can raise the question of cultivating students' critical thinking.Second,compared with reading texts on popular science subjects,reading texts on literary topics are more helpful for teachers in raising the question of cultivating students' critical thinking.Based on the above findings,this article proposes suggestions on teacher training,evaluation criteria,and optimization of curriculum resources.