An Empirical Study On The Critical Thinking Ability Of Normal University English Majors And Corresponding Instructional Strategies

With the development of economy and society, innovative talents are becoming more and more popular worldwide. Critical thinking is the precondition and basis of innovative thinking. Today so many countries draw attention to cultivation of critical thinking, especially for university students. For English major students of normal universities, most of them are supposed to become teachers in the future. Their critical thinking ability will affect their students. Therefore, a study on critical thinking ability of English majors of normal universities is of great significance.In this study, 110 junior and senior English major students from a normal university were chosen as the subjects for the test of critical thinking dispositions by using Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory. Collected data were fully analyzed through SPSS. Meanwhile, in order to get more detailed information of critical thinking dispositions and ability of the subjects, the author interviewed 10 students.Results from data analysis show that:First, English majors in normal universities have a correspondingly negative critical thinking disposition, lower than the critical value. Most of them lack ofcritical thinking dispositions. Second, for the seven dimensions, the students only present strong disposition on maturity. In all the other six dimensions, English majors show a negative critical thinking disposition. Their scores are lower than the critical value, which indicates a low level of critical thinking disposition. Third, there is no statistically significant difference in the gender difference in critical thinking disposition. The results of the interview show that: 1) Most students think that critical thinking skills are important. 2) Most students think that their critical thinking level are not high and that critical thinking training is necessary. 3) Most students claim that their normal university didn’t provide them sufficient training of critical thinking skills.Based on the above results, the critical thinking ability of English majors in normal universities is at a low level. What’s more, students didn’t receive enough training of critical thinking skills,anduniversityteachers pay less attention to critical thinking ability in classroom teaching. In response to the current phenomenon, the author puts forward some suggestions and measures in the aspects of university daily work, teaching management including classroom teaching, and school service to cultivate university students’ critical thinking disposition and skills. At last, the author points out some limitations of this study and gives some suggestions for related future study.