A Study Of The Correlationship Between Junior High School Students' Critical Thinking Disposition And English Achievements

Critical thinking,an important part of the comprehensive quality of junior highschool students,can be defined as the mental process of deep thinking,differentiation,and discovering and solving problem.In “Compulsory Education English Curriculum Standards(2011 edition)”,it is clearly stated that English teaching not only bears the important task of knowledge dissemination,but also involves the cultivation of thinking ability.As the important period of students' development,critical thinking in junior high school English teaching can never be overemphasized since thinking clearly and systematically can improve the way they learn and express their ideas,which is especially significant for their future.In the same way,thinking ability is a decisive factor in the students' English learning achievements.Critical thinking has become an important concept of education and teaching reformation.In the past years,many scholars have devoted themselves to the research on critical thinking education in subject teaching,but there is little empirical research on the critical thinking of junior high school students.Based on the Double Dimension Critical Thinking Capability Model,the present study,by adopting both quantitative and qualitative method,tries to do research on the critical thinking disposition of junior high school students and the correlationship between their critical thinking disposition and their English achievement in an attempt to offer some implications and suggestions for middle school English teaching and learning as well as English teaching reform.This paper adopts Peng Meici's revised edition of California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory-Chinese Version(CTDI-CV)to investigate the current situation of junior high school students' critical thinking disposition.A total of 450 students from4 different grades in Yantai No.1 middle school take part in the research.SPSS17.0 is used for statistical process and analysis of the data obtained from the questionnaire:descriptive statistical method is used to display the current situation of junior high school students' overall critical thinking disposition and its 7 dimensions;Independent-sample T-sample Test and One-way ANOVA are adopted to see whether there are significant differences on students' critical thinking disposition in different grades and different genders.Then,Spearman P Correlation is used to analyze the latent relationship between critical thinking disposition and English achievement.Finally,fourinterview for the main factors influencing the development of students 'critical thinking disposition.Results of the research indicate that:(1)The overall and 7 dimensions of junior high school students' critical thinking disposition are positive.Junior high school students' critical thinking disposition between different genders doesn't have significant difference,however,there are significant differences among students in the four grades.(2)Junior high school students' critical thinking disposition has a significant positive relationship with their English achievement.In other words,critical thinking disposition can improve English achievement effectively.(3)Interview data reveals that the factors affecting the development of junior high school students' critical thinking disposition are diversified,which include internal and external factors,which are chiefly the affects of traditional teaching concept,knowledge-oriented instruction and examination,little awareness of the importance of critical thinking.It is suggested that both English teachers and students should realize the importance of developing the ability of critical thinking in English teaching and learning.Teachers should try to create an environment in which students can think,find problems and solve them by themselves.They need to help students to learn to think and make good judgement and improve their critical thinking so that they can have better acquisition of English.