A Study On The Correlation Between Senior High School Students' Critical Thinking Disposition And English Reading Comprehension Achievement

Reading is an important skill in the process of English learning,and it is also a main way for students to learn and obtain information.In English reading,the process of analyze and understanding of text is the process of students' thinking.The English Curriculum Standards for Senior High schools(2017)takes critical thinking as one of the four curriculum training goals.Students are required to be able to analyze and infer the information of the article independently to judge the author's point of view correctly and to be able to understand and appreciate the excellent culture abroad critically.Therefore,it is very important to cultivate students' critical thinking in the process of English reading.At present,the achievement of English reading comprehension test is the main standard for teachers to measure students' reading ability.By analyzing the current situation of students' critical thinking and its correlation with English reading comprehension achievement,teachers can make reading teaching more targeted.Based on the critical discourse analysis theory and Bloom's education Objective Taxonomy Theory,this study uses quantitative research method to explore the following two problems:(1)What is the current situation of senior high school students' critical thinking disposition?(2)What is the correlation between senior high school students' critical thinking disposition and English reading comprehension achievements?Participants in this study are 314 students in grade two of a senior high school in Yining city.They are from six different classes.The students take part in two tests.One of the tests is the critical thinking disposition questionnaire which is designed by Wen Qiufang in 2009 to test the participants' critical thinking disposition.The other one is the reading comprehension part of the National Matriculation Entrance Test(NMET)paper ? of 2018 which is used to test students' English reading comprehension achievements.Finally,the study adopts SPSS 25.0 to make descriptive analysis,independent-samples T-test,correlation analysis and regression analysis according to the related data.The results indicate that: firstly,students' critical thinking disposition is generally in the upper middle level.Only 4.6% students are in negative tendency.And the critical thinking disposition of students in the dimensions of curiosity,toughness and open-mindedness are still lacking,other dimensions although in a positive tendency,still can continue to make progress.In addition,students with high scores of reading comprehension have higher scores in critical thinking disposition and students with low reading comprehension tend to have lower scores in critical thinking disposition.Secondly,there is a positive correlation between students' critical thinking disposition and English reading comprehension achievement.At the same time,some question types of English reading comprehension have positive correlation with different dimensions of critical thinking disposition,and some are not.And students' critical thinking disposition will have a positive effect on the English reading comprehension achievement.Finally,this study puts forward suggestions for English teachers in the reading teaching about how to use different methods to cultivate students' critical thinking and improve students' English reading achievement according to the results of the study.