A Study Of The Relationship Between English Reading Tasks And The Senior High School Students' Critical Thinking

Critical thinking,one of the learner 's competences to use foreign language systematically,involves in interpretation,analysis,evaluation and inference.It plays an increasingly significant role and is received by foreign language educators.New English Curriculum of English Teaching in High School advocates the cultivation of students' thinking ability,especially the ability to analyze and solve problems.However,besides learning knowledge and skills during reading English,an excellent thinking mode should be developed.Currently,however,the development of thinking ability is far more underestimated than language knowledge in teaching English reading in senior high,and thinking is commonly lacking among language learners.An urgent task focuses on returning to the core of teaching English reading and putting the requirements of the standard of senior high school on the ground.Under the guidance of the Bloom's taxonomy Firth's hierarchical reading framework and Dewey's reflective thinking theory,combined with the relevant research results of stratified English reading,critical thinking' training and English reading,this study uses empirical research to answer the following two questions:(1)What is the relationship between stratified English reading tasks and critical thinking?(2)What effects do English reading tasks have on the senior high school students' Critical thinking disposition?By using qualitative and quantitative methods,in this study,two parallel classes of Grade 1 from a key High School in Yueyang City,are used as the research objects.The experimental class uses the stratified English reading task to train critical thinking,while the control class carries out the conventional reading teaching.The whole experiment lasts for 15 weeks.The experimental tools include English reading comprehension exams,questionnaires,and interviews etc.,and the data are collected and statistically analyzed by SPSS 23.0 software.The results are as follows:(1)The level of English reading task is positively correlated with critical thinking ability.Based on the Bloom's taxonomy and Firth's reading hierarchical framework,combined with Dewey' s reflective thinking theory,the literal reading tasks,including background knowledge,situation creation and title prediction,are consistent with the low-level(knowledge,comprehension)critical thinking.The analytical reading tasks such as role-playing,debating,reflecting,and asking questions are related to high-level(synthesis,evaluation)critical thinking.The deep reading tasks such as subject analysis,emotional experience,situation reproduction,and retelling are consistent with the middle-level(application,analysis)critical thinking.At the same time,with the carrying-out of multi-level reading activities,by using guessing,reasoning,analysis,evaluation and other critical skills,students' English reading level has been proliferated.(2)Stratified English reading can significantly improve students' critical thinking disposition.Using literal reading,inferential reading and critical reading tasks can drive students to use different cognitive skills(low-level,middle-level and high-level)to understand reading materials and solve various reading questions.With the carrying-out of multi-level reading activities,by using critical skills,students' critical thinking disposition,such as self-confidence,analysis ability and systematization ability have improved a lot.The results of this study show that stratified English reading can improve critical thinking disposition and English reading tasks and critical thinking are positively correlated.The results also provide new ideas for the reformation of English reading teaching and the cultivation of critical thinking in senior high schools.However,due to the limited time and sample size,similar studies are necessary to further explore the effectiveness of this method.