A Comparative Study On Cultivating Junior High School Students’ Critical Thinking Ability Through Teachers’ Questioning In Exemplary And Regular English Lessons

Critical thinking is one of the foundations of education in the 21 st century.English curriculum standards for senior high school(Ministry of Education 2017)emphasizes that it is important to cultivate students’ key competencies,and critical thinking is an inextricable part of key competencies.And strengthening students’ critical thinking has become one of the key goals of school education.Therefore,how to cultivate students’ critical thinking in English teaching has attracted the attention of all kinds of researchers and teachers.The study aims to find out the characteristics of English exemplary teachers’ and regular teachers’ questioning in junior high school.Using classroom observation,this study records and analyzes teachers’ classroom questioning from three aspects:question types,questioning strategies and ways of raising questions.And using interviewing,the study is intended to comprehend regular teachers’ opinions and corresponding teaching behaviors about it.Two research questions are as follows:1.What are the differences and similarities of teachers’ questioning in cultivating students’ critical thinking ability between exemplary and regular English lessons in junior high schools?2.What are the regular lessons teachers’ specific opinions and corresponding teaching behaviors towards cultivating students’ critical thinking ability through questioning?To address the question 1,the questioning information in six exemplary and six regular lessons are collected and analyzed.It is found that the regular lessons are less able to cultivate students’ critical thinking ability than the exemplary lessons.There are too many lower-level questions in regular lessons,and all of its higher-level questions are applying questions,which are raised to make students practice what they have learned in the class.By contrast,textual content is attached great importance by exemplary teachers.In their lessons,the four kinds of higher-level questions are all used and they can promote the development of students’ critical thinking in varying degrees.However,there are still some deficiencies in the use of higher-level questions in exemplary lessons,and several questions don’t achieve their original purpose.In terms of questioning strategies,exemplary and regular teachers all prefer to use probing strategy,which can guide students explore more information in the text,check their use of knowledge and guide them to think deeply.However,the probing strategy plays different roles in their lessons.And in terms of the ways of raising questions,exemplary and regular teachers tend to use different ways.Answering voluntarily is preferred by exemplary teachers while chorus-answering is most used in regular lessons.And both advantages and deficiencies do exist in these ways.To answer the question 2,six regular teachers are interviewed.It is shown that regular teachers know little about critical thinking,and some even have misunderstanding of it.They would usually design questions in advance,but questions that point to critical thinking are rarely involved.In their lessons,they seldom use questions to cultivate students’ critical thinking ability consciously,which is affected by some restrictive factors such as examination,time,students’ English level and so on.On the basis of the above findings,this thesis puts forward some suggestions to improve the cultivation of critical thinking in theory learning,questioning skills and test methods.Firstly,teachers should strengthen the learning of critical thinking.Through some special training and learning,teachers can gradually cultivate students’ critical thinking in teaching.Secondly,teachers should effectively use all kinds of questioning skills and strategies.They can design questions well in advance and use various questioning strategies and skills to stimulate students to think constantly.Thirdly,teachers should discuss and learn with each other.They need to adjust their teaching design and questions constantly and give feedback in time.At last,teachers can establish a new test means,which investigates students’ analysis and opinions rather than their scores.