Research On The Impact Of Theme-Based English Reading Instruction On Senior High School Students’ Critical Thinking

The National English Curriculum Standard for General High School(2017 edition,revised in 2020)raises higher demands for senior high school students and constructs the core literacy of English discipline,ranging from linguistic competence,cultural awareness,thinking quality to learning capability.Among them,the thinking quality touches on the ability and level of thinking in logicality,criticism and innovation.With the increasing importance of thinking quality,the cultivation of students’ critical thinking has also come to the foreground.Nevertheless,teachers put more emphasis on the teaching of knowledge points and lack the awareness of stirring up students’ thinking,ignoring the training of critical thinking in daily study and life.In view of this,it is imperative to ameliorate the current situation of teaching and cultivate critical thinking.Theme-based instruction is a teaching mode that integrates language learning with theme content learning,and lays great stress on the development of students’ critical thinking.This study,consequently,attempts to apply this model to high school English reading to probe into its influence on senior high school students’ critical thinking.The three main questions touched upon are as follows:(1)To what extent does the theme-based English reading instruction influence the senior high school students’ critical thinking disposition?(2)In what way does the theme-based English reading instruction affect the senior high school students’ critical thinking skills?(3)What impact does the theme-based English reading instruction have on senior high school students’ English reading achievement?An English reading instruction experiment was carried out by the author for nearly a semester.The students of two parallel classes in Grade One of Jiao Cheng No.1 Middle School in Lvliang were considered as the subjects of the study,including 50 students in the experimental class and 52 students in the control class.During the experiment,theme-based instruction was used in the experimental class and the bottom-up reading teaching mode in the control class.The research tools ranged from questionnaire,tests to interview.Through the analysis of the data,it can be concluded that theme-based English reading instruction poses positive influence on senior high school students’ critical thinking disposition in systematicity,self-confidence,truth-seeking,cognitive maturity,open-mindedness,justice and critical thinking skills in analysis,inference,evaluation.Also,it is able to boost their English reading achievement with advantage.In addition,it converts their passive acceptance of knowledge into active thinking,coming to see problems from multiple lights as well as expressing their different viewpoints from others bravely.This study has verified the impact of theme-based English reading instruction in cultivating senior high school students’ critical thinking,and provides certain referential significance for relevant English teaching research.However,it also has some deficiencies,which need further advances in the future teaching practice.