Cultivation Of Critical Thinking In English Classroom Learning Community In Senior High Schools

As studies of critical thinking have aroused great attention at home and abroad,how to cultivate students' critical thinking deserves further study.Up to now,most scholars concentrate their efforts on the study of cultivating college students' critical thinking,so there are few empirical researches on the cultivation of students' critical thinking in senior high schools.Traditional English teaching in senior high schools pays too much attention to the acquisition of language knowledge and skills,which leads to the fact that students will only passively accept information provided and lack the ability to interpret,judge,analyze and evaluate what they have learned.Therefore,there has been consensus in the education field as to the need of cultivating students' critical thinking in senior high schools.This paper is intended to make a study on the cultivation of students' critical thinking in English classroom learning community in senior high schools.The author attempts to explore whether students' critical thinking can be improved in the English classroom learning community.This paper intends to answer the following three questions:(1)How is the present situation of the development of students' critical thinking in English learning in senior high schools?(2)Are the students satisfied with the learning community in the process of training students' critical thinking in learning community?(3)Does classroom learning community exert influence on developing students' critical thinking?The author chose 96 students of Fuzhou No.18 Senior High School as subjects in this study.Based on the previous researches,the author made a 13-week teaching experiment to explore the feasibility of the cultivation of critical thinking skills in English classroom learning community.After the experiment,the results were analyzed and quantified.The results show that the students in the experimental class are highly satisfied withthe classroom learning community,which proves that learning community is applicable to English class in senior high schools.In addition,by comparing the pre-test and post-test scores,the author finds that the students in the experimental class have improved their critical thinking skills much more greatly than those in the control class.It turns out that learning community does exert positive effect on the cultivation of students' critical thinking.This paper also offers some implications on how to cultivate students' critical thinking,which provides some reference for further research,and is helpful to senior high school teachers in teaching English.Therefore,this study has both theoretical and practical significance.