Improving Students’ Critical Thinking Competence In English Reading Class In Senior High School

Bruner who is a famous educator of American has said: the best state of learning is a way of thinking. The teaching content of critical thinking focuses on the critical thinking skills, such as self-examination, reasoning evaluation, etc. it is one of the main goals of educational reform in many countries in recent years. In view of the neglect of the humanity in traditional teaching, our English teaching pays little attention to the cultivation of senior high school students’ critical thinking ability, therefore, they are comparatively weak in critical thinking. The period of senior high is not only crucial for students’ formation of the outlook on life and the world view, but also an important period for the cultivation of their thinking habit. In English teaching, reading plays an important role. Therefore, how to develop students’ critical thinking skills in English reading class becomes the main direction of this research.At first, the author conducted a questionnaire in Chongqing Nankai Secondary School to find out the status of students’ critical thinking skills. At the same time, the author interviews some English teachers of high school to find out how well the implementation of critical thinking skills is in English class. The results depicted that although some teachers know about the critical skills and have already realized its importance, its implementation in English class is not so optimistic and the students still have a low level of critical thinking skills. The author tries to learn and make a good understanding of the defining and function of critical thinking skills, cognitive development theory and some reading strategies. And based on literature materials, the author chooses three articles to show us how to develop students’ critical thinking skills effectively. The first one mainly talks about the travel to Mekong River, while the second one tells us the equality between men and women. The last one shows us the competition between two owners of different restaurants. Referring to the cultivation of critical thinking, the author focuses on creating a democratic, free and fair atmosphere, using questionable teaching materials to guide the students to think, to ask and to speak out. During the teaching process the author mainly adopts methods of debate and group presentation to cultivate students’ critical thinking skills. The result of this paper shows that purposely training of critical thinking skills in the teaching of English reading is effective for the cultivation of students’ critical thinking ability.