An Empirical Study On Students' Critical Thinking Ability Through Senior High School English Reading Classroom Questioning

In the background of the globalization of economy and information,critical thinking competence,as the need of the time,is becoming more and more important.There is no doubt that the cultivation of students? English proficiency is receiving more and more attention in the field of education.However,nowadays,some English teachers in senior high school generally like to use the “force-feeding” reading teaching mode,which overemphasizes the learning of vocabulary,memorizing of grammar and massive exercises and regard them as the magic weapon for high scores,which caused the neglecting of the cultivation of students? thinking ability.As a result,students? interest in English reading has decreased and some even feel that learning English is a kind of burden.By reading a large amount of literature,the author finds that there are many foreign and domestic researches on how to develop the critical thinking ability of students,but mainly from a theoretical view,and very few empirical researches on real classroom teaching.Therefore,the author used questioning as a medium in reading classroom teaching to promote the development of students? critical thinking ability,and tried to address these questions: Firstly,what is the current situation of critical thinking competence of senior high school students? Secondly,does the critical-thinking-orientated questioning promote the improvement of students? critical thinking and reading competence? Lastly,can this experimental teaching method raise students? interest in English reading?In this research,based on the interactive hypothesis theory,constructivism theory and critical questioning framework theory,two parallel classes of students were chosen to carry out the teaching experiment.The author mainly used the following experimental research tools: critical thinking ability questionnaire,reading ability test paper,and interview.After the experiment,the collected data were analyzed by the SPSS 23.0 and obtained the following conclusions: Firstly,the current situation of critical thinking level of students in senior high school was generally at a low level;Secondly,after the experiment,compared to the controlled class,the students in the experimental class had a significant improvement in their critical thinking ability and reading ability;Finally,by comparing and analyzing the data of the two classes after the teaching experiment,the author verified that this critical-thinking-orientated questioning teaching method can effectively improve the students? reading interest.Finally,the author suggests that teachers should use textbooks in a more creative way,especially in the questioning design.Due to the limitation of experimental samples and time,there is still much left to be done in this research,but the author hopes that this research can be a reference for English critical teaching in senior high school.