A Study Of The Correlation Between The Thinking Ability Tendency Of Senior High School Students And The Level Of English Reading Comprehension

As an input skill,reading plays an important role in English language learning.In English teaching,it is important but difficult to improve students' reading comprehension effectively.In recent years,linguists and educationalists have applied critical thinking ability to the second language acquisition(SLA),including the research of critical thinking ability and English learning,which has made great progress.Researchers have been exploring the influence between critical thinking ability and English reading ability.It is gradually found that the critical thinking ability plays a certain role in the improvement of reading ability.At present,studies in this field mainly focus on undergraduates or English-major students,but paid less attention to senior high school students.The current research which are critical thinking ability and English reading ability is limited,therefore;leaving much room for further study.In this study,there were two methods including test and questionnaire.The experimental subjects were 98 senior three students.They were investigated for their critical thinking tendency and English reading comprehension ability.This study aimed to answer the following two questions,(1)What are the characteristic of senior high school students' critical thinking tendency ?(2)What is the correlation between senior high school students' critical thinking tendency and their English reading comprehension score ? What is the relationship between the dimensions of critical thinking tendency and English reading comprehension score?The author used SPSS 21.0 software to analyse the data obtained from the experiment by the descriptive analysis,the correlation analysis and linear-regression analysis.The major findings of the study are as follows: firstly,the critical thinking tendency of senior high school students is positive but unstable.The dimensions of critical thinking tendency from high to low are analyticity,inquisitiveness,self-confidence,systematicity,open-mindedness,truth-seeking and maturity.Secondly,there is a positive correlation between senior high school students' critical thinking tendency and their English reading comprehension ability.At the same time,four dimensions of critical thinking tendency,analyticity,systematicity,maturity and open-mindedness,have the correlation with their English reading comprehension ability.Thirdly,two dimensions of critical thinking tendency,analyticity and systematicity,have the correlation with four English reading comprehension question types,which also have a certain predictive effect on English reading comprehension ability.This study analyses the correlation between high school students' critical thinking tendency and English reading comprehension ability.Some practical suggestions on improving Englishreading teaching and students' reading comprehension are given,hoping to provide a certain reference value for further researches.