A Study Of The Correlation Between Senior High School Students’ Critical Thinking Disposition And English Reading Scores

In the National English Curriculum Standards for Senior High School,thinking quality is listed as the core competence of English.Critical thinking ability,a key element of thinking quality,is composed of critical thinking skills and critical thinking disposition,with the latter as the psychological basis for the effective development of critical thinking ability.English reading is not only the main source for learners to acquire cultural knowledge of English language,but also an important way to improve their comprehensive competencies to use language.The process of students analyzing the reading material is the process of critical thinking.However,teachers of English reading teaching in senior high schools do not pay enough attention to the cultivation of students’ critical thinking disposition,and there is a lack of research on the correlation between students’ critical thinking disposition and their English reading scores.Therefore,this study carried out an empirical study on critical thinking disposition of senior high school students,aiming to explore the impact of senior high school students’ critical thinking disposition on English reading achievement.The research questions are as follows in this study:(1)What is the situation of senior high school students’ critical thinking disposition ?(2)What is the correlation between senior high school students’ critical thinking disposition and their English reading comprehension scores?(3)What is the impact of critical thinking disposition on high school students’ English reading comprehension scores?Based on the above questions,this study adopted questionnaire and interview methods and took as the research subject 299 senior high school students from a secondary school in Zhangzhou,Fujian Province.SPSS 21.0 are employed to analyse the students’ questionnaire data and English reading comprehension scores,with the results of the study are as follows:(1)The overall critical thinking disposition of senior high school students is at a positive and medium level.The scores of the eight sub-dimensions of students’ critical thinking disposition are ranked as follows: analyticity,justice-orientedness,cognitive maturity,systematicity,self-confidence open-mindedness,truth-seeking,and inquisitiveness.In the 8sub-dimensions of critical thinking disposition,except the dimensions of critical thinking disposition are all positive disposition.(2)Critical thinking disposition and its dimensions are positively correlated with English reading achievement in high school students.The dimensions of critical thinking disposition were correlated with reading scores in the following order: truth-seeking,cognitive maturity,analyticity,open-mindedness,justice-orientedness,systematicity,self-confidence and inquisitiveness.(3)Critical thinking disposition of high school students have a positive effect on English reading performance and can predict their English reading comprehension scores.In addition,the dimension of analyticity of critical thinking disposition also can predict high school students’ English reading performance.On the basis of the above research results,this dissertation puts forward some suggestions on how to create critical English reading teaching and cultivate students’ positive critical thinking disposition,hoping to shed new light on for senior high school English reading teaching.