The Cultivation Of College Students' Critical Thinking In EFL Reading Classes

In today's world,since the competition among countries evolved into that of innovative talents,the cultivation of talents with innovative thinking has become the crucial goal of higher education.Therefore,the cultivation of critical thinking which is the prerequisite and foundation of innovative thinking has demonstrated its increasing importance in higher education.College English,compulsory course involving the largest number of students in higher education,is responsible for cultivating critical thinking.Nevertheless,in present college English classes for non-English majors,especially reading classes,the teachers mainly impart knowledge to students,who are passive recipients.This conventional teaching mode is ineffective for the students to cultivate critical thinking.This study employs action research integrated with quantitative and qualitative methods to carry out the cultivation of critical thinking in reading classes of non-English majors,aiming at probing into effective instructional modes of cultivating students' critical thinking.Based on this purpose,the present researcher designs two rounds of action research including first round integrating critical reading with cooperative learning,supplemented with brainstorming and second round which is an integration of task-based language teaching with comparative reading tasks and supplemented with the ameliorative cooperative learning and conjunct reflection.Therefore,this research is conduced to answer the questions as follows:1.What is the impact of the two rounds action research on the cultivating of critical thinking ability including critical thinking dispositions and critical thinking skills?2.What is the influence of two rounds of action research on students' reading proficiency?3.What is the relationship between critical thinking ability,namely critical thinking dispositions and critical thinking skills,and reading proficiency?4.What is the efficacy of instructional modes in the first round and second round of action research in the enhancement of students' critical thinking respectively?The subjects of this pedagogical experiment are 59 freshmen majoring in law from the Department of Political Science and Law in Shangrao Normal College.They are students of the similar age and educational background who have learnt Englishfor at least 6 years with secondary reading ability.This study adopted CTDI-CV,WGCTA-CV to test the students' critical thinking dispositions and critical thinking skills,and reading comprehension tests selected from CET-4 to testify the students' reading proficiency in pretest and post-test.In addition,three interviews were conducted in pretest,mid-test and post-test between the researcher(also teacher)and part of the students.According to the results of pretest questionnaires,test and interview,the researcher attained a general evaluation of students' critical thinking ability and reading proficiency to make the action plan apposite.On the basis of evaluation results,the researcher made the plan for the first round of action research which included critical reading,cooperative learning and brainstorming.Aiming at assisting the students to develop critical thinking spontaneously according to the problems arising from the first round,the second round of action research included task-based language teaching and comparative reading tasks with the revised cooperative learning and reflection method.After the experiment,a comparison was carried out between the results in pretest and post-test to testify the effectiveness of the two rounds of action research in the cultivation of students' critical thinking ability and reading proficiency.Finally,according to the results from classroom observation and interview,a discussion was conducted on the effectiveness of the teaching approaches and strategies utilized in two rounds of action.The results reveals,firstly,the two rounds of action research are effective in the enhancement of students' critical thinking ability,including critical thinking dispositions and critical thinking skills.As to critical thinking dispositions,among the seven sub-scales of critical thinking dispositions,truth-seeking,open-mindedness,analyticity,systematicity and inquisitiveness respectively are significantly increased after the pedagogical experiment.However,maturity is not significantly improved for the limited experimental time.Critical thinking confidence is decreased although no significant difference is found between the pretest and post-test.Among the five sub-skills of critical thinking,inference,deduction and evaluation are significantly increased,while no significant difference is found in recognition of assumptions and interpretation between pretest and post-test.Secondly,the two rounds of action are effective in the promotion of students' reading proficiency with the analysis and generalization questions ranking the highest.Thirdly,significant correlation exists between student's reading proficiency and critical thinking ability including critical thinking dispositions and critical thinking skills respectively.Thus,the cultivation ofcritical thinking ability in reading class is effective in the enhancement of students' reading proficiency.Lastly,the modes in two rounds of action research demonstrate their effectiveness in the cultivating of students' critical thinking.The mode in the first round,which integrates critical reading with cooperative learning,is proved to be effective especially in cultivating the sub-scales of truth-seeking,open-mindedness in critical dispositions and the sub-skills of inference and deduction in critical thinking skills.The mode in the second round,which integrates task-based language teaching with comparative reading task and supplements with conjunct assessment,has an indispensable effect on developing students' spontaneous use of critical thinking.This mode provides the students with chances to analyze and evaluate different authors' arguments based on the same topic,further drills the students' evaluation skill,and participates students more actively in the tasks.All in all,both the first round and the second round action research are effective modes to develop students' critical thinking as well as enhance students' reading proficiency.Thus,in reading classes,teachers can try to apply these teaching modes into daily instruction.What's more,the method and strategies mentioned above are advisable for the students with eagerness to enhance critical thinking ability and reading proficiency.