A Study On Characteristics Of Critical Thinking Skills In English Writing Of Senior High School Students

In recent years,critical thinking skills have gained wide concern among scholars and researchers.Critical thinking skills play an essential role in students' English learning ability.However,we can see the findings from the researches that students' critical thinking skill is absent.As a highly kind of intensity activity of thinking,critical thinking skill is actually the very important part in writing process.Writing proficiency can reflect critical thinking skill ability directly.Through the literature review,the author figures out that there is little experimental research on critical thinking skills in English writing.Meanwhile,there is little research on participants of senior high school students.The 88 subjects of this research come from class one and class fourteen in Ziyun Tanggu Binhai of Tianjin.The numbers of male and female are 44.This study mainly focuses on the questions as follows:(1)What's the current level of critical thinking skills of senior high school students?(2)What's the present situation of senior high school students' critical thinking skills in English writing?(3)What's the characteristic of critical thinking skills in English writing of senior high school students?The instruments in this research are California Critical Thinking Skills Test and writing composition.The data is collected and analyzed by SPSS 22.0.The mainly findings as follows:(1)The current level of critical thinking skills in senior high school is generally low.In six sub-skills,the level from strong to weak is evaluation,inference,analysis,interpretation,self-regulation,and explanation skills.(2)The characteristic of senior high school students' critical thinking skills in English writing is most of the students have a middle level of critical thinking skills in writing.In six sub-skills,the level from strong to weak is inference,evaluation,analysis,self-regulation,interpretation and explanation,skill.(3)For characteristics of critical thinking skills in writing.The first,the students summarize the main purpose or main idea indirectly;secondly,students make their own thinking expressed directly with bias and prejudice;thirdly,the students communicate with illogical thought.the last,the students express indistinctly and imprecisely.The implication of the research is the English teacher should give the students more chance on training critical thinking skills.The first,English teacher should focus on basic knowledge of English;secondly,English teacher should strengthen analysis ability of discourse;thirdly,English teacher should pay attention to the practice and give the students more detailed guidance in writing.