On The Effectiveness Of English Fiction Reading Based On Socratic Method On Critical Thinking Of Middle School Students

The purpose of this study is to examine if and to what extent English fiction reading based on Socratic Method in a four-month period will impact the students' critical thinking dispositions of 44 Grade 8 students,including 23 females and 21 males,attending a certain junior high school in Jurong.The overarching research questions are: to what extent will English fiction reading based on Socratic Method impact the Grade 8 students' critical thinking dispositions,and on which disposition will English fiction reading based on Socratic Method has more effect? This study employs a pretest-posttest design using the California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory Chinese Version(CCTDI-CV),and the intervention approach was English fiction reading based on Socratic Method.Analysis of the statistics is conducted with the assistance of SPSS 17.0 to assess the participants' mean scores of critical thinking on the California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory Chinese Version(CCTDI-CV)pretest and posttest.The findings show that the participants' overall mean score for CCTDI in the posttest is 273.57,compared with 249.57 in the pretest,and the p value of.000 shows that there is great significance between the scores in the pretest and the posttest.Also each of the seven scales has improved.And the scores for all the seven scales except self-confidence and inquisitiveness are significantly different from those in the pretest.Therefore,it is concluded that English fiction reading based on Socratic Method can be used as an effective approach to cultivate students' critical thinking.But the limitations of the small sample size,lack of randomness and the limited competence of the researcher should not be overlooked.