Research On Senior High School English Teachers' Cognition Of Cultivating Students' Critical Thinking Abilities

English Curriculum Standard for Ordinary High School(2017)listed the quality of thinking as one of English key competencies for the first time.Accordingly,critical thinking which is one of an important embodiments of quality of thinking has attracted many researchers' attention.Moreover,critical thinking is the essential quality and key ability of the individual's development in twenty-first century.Senior high school stage is the golden period to cultivate students' critical thinking abilities.However,to actually put it into practice,teacher cognition,which directs teachers' teaching behavior plays a vital role.Therefore,to explore senior high school English teachers'cognition of critical thinking cultivation is of great significance.The following research has been done in this paper to clarify the current situation of English teachers'cognition in Inner Mongolia senior high schools,to find out the existing problems and to further provide some practical suggestions.The subjects involved in this research,68 senior high school English teachers in Inner Mongolia,are administrated questionnaires to figure out their cognition including their knowledge of critical thinking,attitudes towards cultivating students'critical thinking abilities in English teaching and the ways they used for critical thinking cultivation.Besides,six subjects are chosen to conduct face-to-face interviews.Finally,the author finds out that senior high school English teachers in Inner Mongolia have a general knowledge of critical thinking and the majority of them have a clear mind that critical thinking is composed of cognitive skills and critical thinking dispositions.With regard to their attitudes,senior high school English teachers hold positive attitudes towards cultivating students' critical thinking abilities in English teaching and highly approve its importance.Also,various ways are adopted for cultivation including the explicit teaching,questioning technique,designing activities like group discussions,debate and problem-solving tasks,among which the questioning technique of asking referential and follow up questions is most widely used.However,through analyzing the data,the author still finds some existing problems,such as teachers' incomprehensive and unsystematic understanding of critical thinking,low effectiveness of English learning activities designed for critical thinking abilities cultivation and so on.Based on the existing problems,some practical suggestions are also put forward,like organizing more lectures,teaching and research activities about critical thinking,establishing a sound system for critical thinking cultivation and so on.