A Research On The Cultivation Of Student's Critical Thinking In Senior High School English Teaching

With the development of knowledge economy and the information-based society,critical thinking has become an important goal for the future cultivation of talents in the international community,and is also a hot research topic of common concern in the domestic and foreign education circles.Western governments attach great importance to the cultivation and research of critical thinking and bring it into the educational objectives and teaching contents of each stage.The cultivation of students' critical thinking has also been paid more and more attention and substantially promoted by the domestic higher education sector,but it has not been given enough attention in the field of basic education.At present,there is a lack of research on critical thinking of senior high school students,especially empirical research.In view of the inseparable relationship between language and thinking,it is an inevitable trend of English language teaching and research to improve students' critical thinking ability through English subject teaching.Therefore,it is necessary and forward-looking to study the cultivation of critical thinking in high school English teaching.Based on the two-dimensional structure model in the Delphi Report,this study adopts the quantitative and qualitative research methods.In terms of the quantitative research,the author developed the Questionnaire on the Cultivation Situation of Critical Thinking in Senior High School English Teaching based on Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory-Chinese version(CTDI-CV)revised by Peng et al,and conducted a questionnaire survey to 206 grade two students of a senior high school in Beijing.Through SPSS 20.0,the data of questionnaire was analyzed by using descriptive statistics,independent sample t-test,and one-way ANOVA analysis methods.In qualitative research,the semi-structured interview outline was used to in-depth interview four English teachers so as to help analyze the main factors affecting the cultivation of critical thinking in high school English teaching.The findings are as follows:(1)The overall critical thinking disposition of senior high school students is in the middle level.In the seven sub dimensions,students have strong dispositions in the dimensions of inquisitiveness,analyticity,open-mindedness,maturity,and critical thinking confidence,while their dispositions toward truth-seeking and systematicity are relatively weak.(2)Basically,there is no significant gender difference in the critical thinking disposition of senior high school students.Only in the dimension of maturity,the score of female students is significantly higher than that of male students.From total score,there exists no significant difference in the critical thinking disposition of students with different English academic performances,but from the sub dimensions,there are significant differences:students in high score group have significantly stronger dispositions than low score group students in open-mindedness and analyticity.(3)The cultivation of high school students'critical thinking is affected by many factors,among which school,curriculum and students factors play the greater roles in the obstruction,followed by teachers and social factors.Based on the above findings,the author suggests that carrying out the cultivation of students'critical thinking in high school English teaching needs to advocate issue-based teaching,implement process evaluation,refine cultivation objectives,and provide external support.