Research On The Impact Of High School English Writing Teaching On Students' Writing Speculative Ability Based On Cooperative Learning

The cultivation of critical thinking skills has become one of the key objectives of high school English education.As an effective means of language and thinking expression,English writing plays an important role in cultivating students’ critical thinking skills.However,the lack of critical thinking is common in the English compositions of high school students,which is usually manifested as that the analysis is not comprehensive enough,the content is not sufficient,the lack of necessary logical reasoning and explanation and so on.Moreover,teachers tend to focus on the teaching of writing at the language level rather than the content and thinking level,ignoring the cultivation of students’ critical thinking skills.In the domestic academic circles,the studies on the cultivation of high school students’ critical thinking skills in English writing,especially the empirical studies on the correlation between English writing teaching based on Cooperative Learning and students’ critical thinking skills needs to be further deepened.Therefore,through empirical study,the researcher applies cooperative learning to English writing teaching and discusses the influence of the writing teaching based on Cooperative Learning on students’ critical thinking skills.Specifically,this study aims to answer the following three questions:(1)What are the effects of Cooperative Learning-based English writing teaching on students’ critical thinking skills ?(2)What are the reasons for the effects of Cooperative Learning-based English writing teaching on students’ critical thinking skills ?(3)How to improve students’ critical thinking skills via Cooperative Learning-based English writing teaching ?The participants of this study were the 74 students from two parallel classes of Grade One in a senior high school.The two classes were respectively set as the Experimental Class(EC)and the Control Class(CC).Before the experiment,a pretest was carried out in the two classes and there were no significant differences in the critical thinking skills between them.In the experiment,the traditional writing teaching was adopted in the CC,and the writing teaching based on Cooperative Learning was adopted in the Experimental Class.After the experiment,a posttest was carried out in the two classes to explore the influence of writing teaching based onCooperative Learning on the students’ critical thinking skills.In addition,students in the EC were required to finish questionnaires before and after the experiment respectively.After the experiment,teachers and students were interviewed to further explore their feelings and suggestions on English writing teaching based on Cooperative Learning.On the basis of quantitative and qualitative analysis,this study draws the following conclusions:Firstly,the writing teaching based on Cooperative Learning can enhance the overall level of student critical thinking skills,in terms of critical thinking sub-item skills,writing teaching based on Cooperative Learning can improve students’ writing analysis,evaluation,explanation and self-regulation,but it has little obvious influence on their interpretation and inference.From the comparison results of the posttest,in terms of the overall level of critical thinking skills,the mean of scores of the the the EC(29.2222)was much higher than that of the CC(26.8421),and there was a significant difference in the overall level of writing critical thinking skills between the two classes(P<0.05),and the EC in pretest and posttest also showed a significant difference(P<0.05).In terms of the writing analysis,evaluation,explanation and self-regulation,the mean of scores of the EC were significantly higher than those of the CC,and there were significant differences between the two classes(P<0.05),and the EC in pretest and posttest also showed a significant difference(P<0.05).In terms of interpretation and inference,there was no significant difference between the two classes(P>0.05),and there was no significant difference in pretest and posttest of the EC(P>0.05).Secondly,there are six main reasons for the effects of Cooperative Learning-based English writing teaching on students’ critical thinking skills: in terms of interpretation,students ignore the organization of written expression,students are influenced by the traditional writing teaching model,and the cultivation of interpretation needs a long-term process.In terms of analysis,the gap between students has narrowed and the improvement of the overall level;teachers encourage students to brainstorm and think positively;students learn from each other.In terms of evaluation,the gap between students has narrowed and the improvement of their overall level;students evaluate each other and are good at using arguments;the influence of students’ familiarity with the composition topic.In terms of inference,students lack the habits of logical reasoning and the level of reasoning thinking ofstudents in senior one is relatively low.In terms of explanation,teacher’s instruction and training of logical connectives;students can communicate and learn from each other,and their explanation skills can be exercised.In terms of self-regulation,teacher’s guidance and peer influence;composition revision and the effects of students’ psychology,which help students to reflect and improve their compositions positively.Finally,teachers can improve students’ critical thinking skills via Cooperative Learning-based English writing teaching in three stages: first,in the pre-writing cooperation stage,let students cooperate to choose topics independently,spread their minds,and collect materials,these can cultivate students’ analysis skills.In addition,in the writing cooperation stage,let students think independently and clearly in order to develop their interpretation skills and analysis skills;clear judgment and objective evaluation can develop students’ evaluation skills,improve their writing abilities;the combination of oral and written writing should be organized,rich expression and good interpretation can develop students’ interpretation and interpretation skills;develop the habit of reasoning can improve students’ inference skills.Finally,in the post-writing cooperation stage,students should be guided to reflect timely and make cooperative evaluation,these can cultivate their self-regulation skills.This study provides some pedagogical implications.First,English teachers can use the writing teaching model based on Cooperative Learning,which is conducive to improving students’ writing critical thinking skills and composition qualities.In addition,we should pay attention to the central position of students and the guiding role of teachers.Finally,English teachers should strengthen the research on the cultivation strategies of critical thinking skills and pay attention to the writing teaching strategies which are positively related to it.