The Influence Of Different Cognitive Questions On English Majors' Critical Thinking

In recent years,the importance of cultivating critical thinking among learners has widely been acknowledged in the field of language teaching,especially in EFL teaching.This research was aimed to investigate the influences of low-level questions and high-level questions on the development of students' critical thinking in the environment of both teacher-led classes and group discussion based on Bloom's taxonomy.The focus was the influence of different cognitive questions on critical thinking,which was not investigated in domestic researches.Two research questions were addressed:1.In the teacher-led classes,(1)how frequently are low-level and high-level questions used by teachers in EFL classrooms?(2)how do low-level and high-level questions influence the development of students'critical thinking?2.Through group discussion,(1)how do low-level and high-level questions influence the development of students' critical thinking?(2)How do six question types influence the development of students' critical thinking?This research selected three female English teachers and their corresponding 87 first-year,second-year and third-year English majors as participants in teacher-led classes and another 61 second-year English majors as participants in group discussion.In teacher-led classes,a naturalistic observation of class was adopted and at the same time classroom audio-recording data was collected.In group discussion,16 low-level and high-level question groups,based on Bloom's taxonomy and the textbook,were prepared in advance.Participants were divided into 16 groups and each group discussed one question group which consisted of a low-level question and a high-level question in a stipulated time.The group discussions were recorded.Two major findings in this research were showed as follows:1.In teacher-led classes,teachers asked far more low-level questions than high-level questions.High-level questions promoted the development of students'critical thinking while low-level questions had a limited role in nurturing students'critical thinking.However,teachers did not make full use of high-level questions to evoke students' critical thinking.Some high-level questions were the only simple repetitions of the initial questions which lacked further elaboration from students.2.Through group discussion,high-level questions had a much greater promotion on the development of students' critical thinking than low-level questions,which was mainly manifested in those dimensions:content relativity,detailed argument,content flexibility and content comprehensiveness.Different types of low-level questions and high-level questions exert no great influences on the critical thinking development.Any type of high-level questions might elicit a series of critical thinking processes such as analyzing,synthesizing,judging,reasoning and evaluating.This research had its important implications:First,in general,teachers should raise more high-level questions to promote the development of students' critical thinking in teacher-led classes.After asking the initial high-level question,teachers could use more than one follow-up question of different levels where the level of the last question was the same with or even higher than the initial high-level question to elicit more responses from students so as to foster their critical thinking.Second,teachers needed to combine high-level questions with group discussions in EFL classrooms.Before class,teachers first designed different high-level questions which included application,analysis,synthesis and evaluation types based on Bloom's taxonomy and teaching content so as to arouse students' interests in discussion and promote the practice of critical thinking processes.In class,teachers also needed to choose appropriate methods to divide groups and reminded students that they should not interrupt others'discussions so that students would form interactive groups instead of dominant ones.When the group discussions were finished,teachers could ask each group to summarize all the viewpoints and give feedback on different dimensions in critical thinking such as detailed argument,content relativity and content comprehensiveness.This process enabled students to know the shortcomings in their critical thinking abilities and try to improve them consciously in the future study.