An Empirical Study On How Questioning Promotes Critical Thinking In English Reading In Junior High School

Classroom questioning in English reading teaching is an essential teaching strategy and a method of cultivating students’ critical thinking ability.This is in the sense that as teachers engages the students in questions especially those which are highly cognitively demanding,the students are motivated and encouraged to think at a cognitively higher level in answering the questions which then improves their cognitive thinking abilities.Students with critical thinking abilities are much better at coping with challenges they encounter during their English reading process than those who lack them and through critical reading,students can present their own independent opinions.Currently,in China,studies on classroom questioning and its impact on the cultivation of student’s critical thinking abilities are but a few as compared to researches abroad on the same.In fact,most of these studies have just been started recently.Because of this gap in domestic language research,this study aims at filling this deficit by exploring how classroom questions in English reading teaching influences the development of critical thinking among the junior middle school students.This article is based on Piaget’s theory of cognitive development,Bloom’s taxonomy of cognitive hierarchy and Sanfey & Chang(2008)and Gawronski & Creighton(2014)’s dual-process theory as its conceptual framework combined with the analysis of severe deficiency existing in current junior middle school English teaching especially those concerning its rigidity and failure to cultivate student’s critical thinking.Through questionnaires,classroom observation,teaching experiments,pre-test and post-test as well as an interview,the dissertation seeks to answer the three questions:1.What is the current situation and problems of Classroom questions in junior middle school English class?2.What is the current situation and problems of critical thinking ability cultivation among junior middle school students?3.Can classroom questions,appropriately raised,contribute to the cultivation of the critical thinking ability among middle school students?To answer these questions,the researcher first conducted three weeks of classroom observation before the commencement of teaching experiment in Ningjin NO.3 middle school.A total of 30 classes were observed after which by analyzing the recorded results the researcher concluded that most of the teacher asked questions were short/simple answer questions,demonstrative questions and yes/no answer questions which do not cultivate students critical thinking abilities.From here,the researcher then conducted a one and a half months of teaching experiment which has been targeted reading class questions in English classroom teaching.A total of 60 students participated(30 in the control class and 30 in experimental class).Through the analysis of pre-test and post-test scores of this two classes the author verified that it is true that classroom questions,appropriately raised,do have a positive impact on the cultivation of students’ critical thinking ability.