A Study On Excellent Teachers' Teaching Strategies For The Cultivation Of Students' Critical Thinking In Junior High School

With the proposal of thinking quality in English key competencies and the demand for talents in a fast-developed society,critical thinking?CT?cultivation is attached to growing emphasis by educators.However,present teaching conditions of CT cultivation are out of satisfaction.Junior high school students are in a crucial period of CT development and reading class is considered as the major stage for thinking cultivation,whereas the teaching quality of reading classes in junior high school is diverse.This research,based on constructivism learning theory and meaningful reception learning theory,adopts quantitative and qualitative research methods to study students'present CT condition and CT teaching condition.Then,three reading classes from 12^thNational English Excellent Classes in Junior High School are observed to analyze teaching strategies for CT applied by excellent teachers.This research mainly answers the following three questions:?1?How are English teachers'understanding and implementation of CT cultivation in junior high school??2?What teaching strategies do excellent teachers usually apply in reading class to cultivate students'CT??3?How do excellent teachers apply these teaching strategies in reading class?The major findings of the research can be concluded as follows.Firstly,although most teachers have been aware of the importance of practicing students'CT in reading class,they lack an adequate understanding of CT to take action.Secondly,Among the eight teaching strategies for CT applied by excellent teachers such as posting further follow-up questions,grouping information and applying question chains,etc.,each of them plays different role in practicing CT skills at different stages of a reading class.Thirdly,self-regulation,which includes self-examination and self-correction,is the most easily overlooked CT skill,even the three excellent teachers fail to apply relative strategies to practice it.Fourthly,the specific applications of the eight teaching strategies for CT can be categorized into three ways:employing physical resources,teacher's self-resources and student resources.Fifthly,the orientations of the eight teaching strategies for CT can be concluded into two:1.Prompting classroom interaction;2.Creating contexts for classroom interaction.At last,some pedagogical implications are proposed as follows.First of all,teachers'training centered on CT cultivation is necessary to be carried out to help teachers fully understand CT and relevant skills.Besides,the eight teaching strategies found in this paper are highly recommended to be applied to develop students'CT.Moreover,teachers should emphasize cultivating students'self-regulation skill to teach them to reflect.Additionally,three kinds of resources:physical resources,teacher's self-resources and student resources can be fully applied when teachers carry out teaching strategies for CT.Finally,teachers should focus on prompting classroom interaction and creating contexts for classroom interaction which are two orientations to further detect teaching strategies for CT.