The Study Of The Students’ Critical Thinking In Higher Vocational English Reading

As the foundation of creative thinking, critical thinking has been one of the hottest issuesin the education research in many countries. During the curriculum reform in our country, thecultivation of critical thinking has also become an important goal of higher vocational talentstraining. The characteristic of English course, especially reading course provides theenvironment for higher vocational students’ critical thinking training. The traditional Englishreading teaching in vocational college only pays attention to language knowledge, oftenignoring the training of students’ thinking. The Problem-based learning teaching model whichis based on constructivism learning theory and Dewey’s pragmatism conforms to the goalsand characteristic of higher vocational education. Due to the researches on critical thinking athome and abroad, this paper probes into the PBL teaching model in English reading teachingin order to discover the effective approach of training students’ critical thinking.The students of four classes who participate in the experiment are Nursing majorfreshmen at Zhangzhou Health Vocational College. Two classes adopt PBL teaching modeland the other two use traditional teaching model. It takes three months to do the experiment.According to the higher vocational students’ characters, the writer had modified TheCalifornia Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory (CCTDI-CV) to be the data collection tool.The comparative classes and the experimental classes are measured before and after theexperiment. The results show that there is no significant difference before and after theexperiment. But the subscale of CCTDI-CV shows significant difference in truth-seeking，analyticity and self-confidence aspect of the experimental classes students. Through theobservation in teaching process, the paper discovers that students’ emotional attitude changeda lot after the experiment.Obviously, using PBL teaching model in higher vocational English reading teaching willpromote the training of students’ critical thinking. However, the cultivation of critical thinkingneeds a long process and is finally used to improve critical thinking skills.