An Experimental Study On The Effect Of Critical Reading Teaching On Vocational School Students' Critical Thinking Ability

Critical thinking ability draws increasing attention in education field in recent years.As reading can help develop students' critical thinking ability,it is of great significance to carry out critical reading training in English teaching.However,English reading teaching in our country puts too much emphasis on language itself.Many scholars have conducted various researches on critical reading for English majors,while few researches can be found for vocational school students.Thus,this study conducts an experiment on critical reading teaching in a vocational school to show its effectiveness on improving students' critical thinking abilities,thus help teachers gain some insight into vocational school English reading teaching.Based on the critical discourse analysis theories and constructivist learning theory,the research deals with the following research questions:1.What are the characteristics of students' critical thinking ability in the vocational schools?2.What effect does critical reading teaching have on students' critical thinking ability in terms of inference,analysis and evaluation?3.What effect does critical reading teaching have on students' affective qualities of critical thinking ability?The experiment lasts one semester,and the students of two classes in Nantong Normal College are involved as subjects.In the beginning,a WGCTA test is adopted to test the participants' critical thinking ability.Then,critical reading teaching is adopted in the experimental class while traditional teaching method is continued in the control class.At the end of the semester,a reading test involving questions to assess students' cognitive skills of critical thinking ability is conducted to compare the scores.In the end,a questionnaire is used to investigate the students' affective qualities of critical thinking ability.The research finds that the overall critical thinking ability of vocational school students is at a low and medium level,especially in drawing inference.When doing reading comprehension questions,they are more capable of finding detailed information from the context while less competent to answer inference,analytical and evaluation questions.After one-semester training,the experimental group not only make greater improvement in the abilities to make inference,analysis and evaluation,but they become curious to raise questions,open-minded to revise their own mistakes,and confident in analyzing,inferring and evaluating,meanwhile,they are more honest and persistent in English learning.However,the control group remains almost the same as before.The study provides some valuable implications for English reading teaching in vocational school:1)Teachers should encourage students to read actively and explore what they are reading between lines in order to cultivate students' ability of analyzing,inferring and evaluating.2)Teachers should encourage students to think actively and positively.More opportunities should be given to students to discuss and cooperate in groups,during which process,students can be more open-minded and confident to express their own opinions.3)Teachers should play the role as a guide rather than act as a dominator in the classroom.Teachers should mainly teach students some reading strategies and useful reading skills and point a new and bright way for students when they are in trouble.Finally,some limitations and suggestions for future research are put forward.For example,the number of subjects is still limited and the quality of questionnaire and the test paper needs improving.