The Effects Of Reflective Journals On Non-english Major Undergraduate Students' Critical Thinking Skills In L2 Writing

Critical thinking skill is an important part of innovation ability and the level of its training is a significant indicator to measure the quality of talents training in universities.However,Huang(1998,2010)pointed out that in China,the absence of critical thinking skill exists among both English majors and non-English majors.Sun(2011)also proposed that the cultivation of critical thinking skills should be deepened into the reform of English teaching.As a result,it is very important to explore ways that can improve the critical thinking skill level of college students.While it has been found that the cultivation of critical thinking skills has not got enough attention by teachers,which is also overlooked in the college English courses(Zou & Gao,2015).That is why it is particularly important to explore some measures to promote their critical thinking skills in foreign language teaching.Reflection as a kind of critical thinking,keeps a close connection with critical thinking skill.Reflective journal,as a means and tool for reflection,is consequently worthwhile for scholars to further think and explore whether the critical thinking skills of students can be influenced by it.After summarizing and systematically analyzing the research results of reflective journals and critical thinking skills,this paper attempts to explore students' reflection dimensions in their reflective journals.In addition,the author also tries to figure out the influence and role of reflective journal writing in promoting students' critical thinking skill level showed in their L2 writing through empirical research method.Two natural non-English major classes of a university in Northeast China took part in the current study in which a combination method including quantitative research method and qualitative research method was adopted.The two natural classes were divided into two groups: the experimental group and the control group.At the beginning of the research,students from both groups took part in a writing test,which was the pre-test for this study.During a 15-week semester of learning,students in the experimental group wrote two reflective journals every week,while students in the control group conducted normal teaching activities without writing reflective journals.At the end of the semester,students from both groups took part in another writing test as the post-test.After the post-test,the 120 reflective journals written by the students in the experimental group in the eighth week and the last week as well as a total of 120 essays by two groups in the writing tests were collected by the author.The reflective journals were analyzed in the perspective of reflection dimension,and the level of critical thinking skills in students' writing texts were evaluated by the three raters including the author,using the “criteria for assessing CT in L2 writing”.All these results aim to explore the following two questions: What dimension does the non-English major undergraduates reflect in their reflective journals;what effects does reflective journal writing have on the level of non-English majors' critical thinking skills in their L2 writing.The result of qualitative analysis of reflection dimension in reflective journals shows that among the 120 reflective journals collected from experimental group,98.3% of the reflective journals contained the content of the descriptions of students' own experiences,that is,the first dimension of reflection;85% of reflective journals stayed in the second dimension of reflection,meaning that students have analyzed and summarized what they had experienced;45% of reflective journals suggest that a new understanding has emerged from students' experiences,in other words,the third dimension of reflection is reached;and there are only 23.3% reflective journals in which the fourth dimension of reflection has been reached.This kind of situation means that a complete and effective reflection is achieved in just a small part of reflective journals.The quantitative analysis of students' critical thinking skill level implies that the students in the experimental group have significantly improved their critical thinking skill level reflected in their L2 writing after one semester of training on reflective journal writing.Specifically,the nine standards for evaluating the level of critical thinking skills,including clarity,accuracy,precision,depth,breadth,significance,relevance,logic,and fairness,have been improved to varying degrees.In contrast,there is no significant change in students' critical thinking skill level between the pre-test and post-test of the control group.The improvement of experimental group's level proves that the reflective journal writing is effective in cultivating critical thinking skills.The results of this research have some implications for college English teaching and the evaluation of critical thinking skill level.First of all,the relationship between the teacher and students can be strengthened by reflective journals and the students' critical thinking skill is also promoted by them.The teacher should easily recognize the role of reflective journals and consider applying this method in the process of teaching.Besides that,the level of students' critical thinking skill can be reflected in their L2 writing texts.Teachers can analyze and evaluate the students' critical thinking skills in L2 writing through particular measurements.In addition,scholars can also focus on developing more appropriate measurements on the critical thinking skills shown in L2 writing.