| Critical thinking is the progress of purposeful,self-regulatory judgment which gives reasoned evaluation criteria to conscious thinking and makes reasonable judgments.However,the traditional English reading pays more attention to the teaching of language forms and neglects the cultivation of critical thinking,which causes the status quo of absent of critical thinking among students.To be accurate,question teaching is making text problematic to lead students to interpret the text deeply through questions,so as to cultivate their critical thinking ability.Most of previous research focused on college students to investigate the critical thinking ability of college students,but the research on cultivating the critical thinking ability of senior high school students is less.According to the New Curriculum Standard in 2017,the specific goal of the English curriculum in senior high schools is to cultivate and develop the students' core competencies in the subject as language competence,cultural awareness,thought quality,learning ability and so on,critical thinking ability is one of the most paramount content of thought quality.In this research,two parallel classes 1701 and 1704 were selected from senior grade of Linfen No.1 Middle School,with a total of 89 students.The research used the research methods of questionnaire,teaching experiment,reading test and interview.Before the experiment,students were asked to test the questionnaire of critical thinking skills and the reading test respectively;then the experimental class applied the question teaching on reading for 16 weeks;after the experiment,the students in both classes were asked to complete the reading test and questionnaire as the pre-experiment,later the changes of students' cognitive emotions after the experiment were realized by interview.The relevant data collection and analysis aims to answer the following questions:(1)What's the effect of question teaching on learners' critical thinking skills?(2)What's the effect of question teaching on students' reading ability?(3)What's the effect of question teaching on students' cognitive emotions?The data analysis indicated:(1)In EC,the critical thinking skills of analysis,inference and evaluation have gained remarkable improvement between pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire.In terms of analysis,many students have been able to analyze the structure of reading text accurately and answer the questions that teacher raised correctly;in terms of inference,most of students have been able to infer based on the textual context initiatively instead of waiting passively;in terms of evaluation,many students have been able to expresstheir viewpoints and raise doubts and make comments on others' points.(2)In EC,the reading scores of summarizing the main idea of the passage,logical reasoning and understanding the author' writing intention were higher after experiment which manifested that students' reading ability has improved greatly.(3)In EC,the result of the interview indicated that question teaching can remarkably improve students' cognitive maturity,self-confidence and attitude towards English learning.In terms of cognitive maturity,many students have been able to make less subjective judgement and be open to different voices;in terms of self-confidence,some students were afraid to ask questions and express their opinions in group work for fear of making mistakes,however,these conditions have facilitated after the experiment;in terms of English learning attitude,some students thought that English reading was boring but now they begin to be more interested in English learning and their learning motivation also increased.In short,the application of question teaching in English reading is favorable for senior high school students to improve their critical thinking ability,reading ability and cognitive emotions.Finally,the author stated the teaching enlightenment,limitations and suggestion for further research. |
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