Cultivation Of Critical Thinking In English Reading Teaching In Senior High Schools

As for the teaching of English reading in high school, the main task for students is to get the main idea of the text by using different reading strategies. Students pay more attention to language points and language skills. As a result, students just simply accept what teachers say and what texts in the book state. They don't have their own ideas and perspectives. What's worse, they don't know how to analyze, question and criticize. Nowadays, more and more people begin to focus their eyes on the lack of critical thinking. Some researchers support the training of critical thinking with the method of the subject teaching, which should start at the stage of middle school. The college period is a little late for the training. But the experimental study of training high school students' critical thinking is in urgent need.This paper integrates the cultivation of critical thinking into senior English reading teaching to form a new critical literacy different from the traditional reading teaching. Based on the exploring of critical thinking-oriented teaching theories and models of English reading and given the characteristics of high school students and English textbooks, the present study tends to combine the Four Resources Model of Critical Literacy put forward by Luke and Freebody with McLaughlin & Allen's framework of teaching critical literacy strategies. On the basis of the task-based teaching method, this kind of critical reading teaching mode is suitable for high school English teaching, which includes three basic stages, pre-reading activities to activate students' existing knowledge and experience, while-reading activities to deepen understanding and post-reading activities to reflect and construct personal understanding. The teaching design goes into depth step by step, making students develop critical thinking in the process of completing the activities. The teaching experiment put the critical reading teaching mode into the English reading teaching practice to study whether it can cultivate high school students' critical thinking awareness and develop their critical thinking ability or not. Besides, students' English reading comprehension performance is taken into consideration, especially the items about the main idea, inference and the author's idea, attitude and purpose.The experiment was carried out with selecting 94 senior one students from two general classes each with 47 students in Fuzhou Overseas Chinese Middle School for comparison. One class was randomly chosen as the experimental class adopting critical thinking-oriented teaching of English reading and the other class was the control class adopting traditional English teaching manner. Washington State University's Critical Thinking Rubric, reflective essays, stimulated recall interview, SPSS software and two reading test papers (each four passages with 15 items) were used in this research.We analyzed the experimental results by using experimental evaluation tools after twelve weeks' teaching experiment. The reflective essays showed that students can read the text critically and put forward their own understanding towards the text. The interview results reflected students' idea and reaction to critical reading class. They showed the interest, actively participating in class discussions. Compared the experimental data of Washington State University's Critical Thinking Rubric between pre-test and post-test, we found that more students could understand the text, reflect the text content and put forward personal views according to their personal experience. Students could interpret themes from different perspectives, capture the implication of the author and pay more attention to the text effects on individual thinking. What's more, students behaved better than students from control class in English reading comprehension test. We have to mention another point that some test items about the main idea, inference and the author's idea, attitude and purpose in experimental class obtain higher grades than in control class. In conclusion, the results of the study showed that critical thinking-oriented teaching of English reading could raise students' critical awareness, develop their critical thinking ability and improve their English reading achievement. Students' abilities to summarize the main idea of the text, infer from the literal meaning and catch the author's attitude and purpose are also greatly promoted.This paper performed an empirical study about critical reading of English teaching in senior high school. The results show that students' critical thinking are developed, which presents a reference for middle school English teachers to study in the cultivation of critical thinking. This study has certain practical research value, which is the beneficial supplement for relevant studies on the cultivation and development of critical thinking by using critical reading teaching mode in high school English teaching.