A Study On The Effect Of Blended Learning On Thinking Quality In English Writing For Senior High School Students

Thinking quality,one of core competencies,was officially put forward in National English Curriculum Standards for Senior High School(2017 edition).It refers to the ability and level of thinking in terms of logic,criticalness,and creativity.As the mental performance of core competencies,it helps to improve students’ ability to analyze and solve problems.In recent years,more and more teachers and researchers have begun to pay more attention to thinking quality,so there are more and more researches on the cultivation of thinking quality.English writing,as a kind of language output,not only needs good expressions but also requires fresh and novel contents,logical structure,and correct and critical views.So,studying effective teaching method to cultivate students’ thinking quality in English writing is very important.Blended learning has its advantages in teaching space,teaching time,teaching resources and so on,which is helpful for students’ deep learning and the cultivation of students’ thinking quality in English writing.So,this study tried to explore the effect of blended learning on thinking quality in English writing for senior high school students,after consulting a large amount of literature.The study selected two senior second-year classes in Lanzhou City as experimental class and control class and carried out ten weeks’ teaching experiment.In the process of teaching experiment,blended learning was adopted in EC while regular teaching(regular offline classroom teaching)was conducted in CC.According to the definition of thinking quality in English writing,the study selected evaluating activities to cultivate senior high school students’ critical thinking in English writing;selected sorting out activities,summarizing activities,analyzing activities,and constructing activities to cultivate senior high school students’ logical thinking in English writing;selected transforming activities and open mind activities to cultivate senior high school students’ creative thinking in English writing.Before the experiment,Writing Pre-test and Thinking Quality Scale were conducted in EC and CC to check students’ thinking quality in English writing.After conducting ten weeks’ teaching experiment,the post-tests,including Writing Post-test and Thinking Quality Scale were conducted.With analysis and discussion of the results of pre-tests and post-tests,the following three questions were answered:1)What’s the effect of blended learning on senior high school students’ logical thinking in English writing?2)What’s the effect of blended learning on senior high school students’ critical thinking in English writing?3)What’s the effect of blended learning on senior high school students’ creative thinking in English writing?The independent-samples test showed that there was no significant difference in thinking quality in English writing between EC and CC in pre-tests,since the p-value of logical thinking,critical thinking,and creative thinking in pre-tests was more than 0.05,while the independent-samples test showed that there was a significant difference in thinking quality in English writing between EC and CC in post-tests since the p-value of logical thinking,critical thinking,and creative thinking in post-tests was less than 0.05,which indicated that blended learning in EC could much more effectively improve senior high school students’ thinking quality in English writing than regular teaching(regular offline classroom teaching)in CC.In addition,the paired-samples tests of Writing Test and Thinking Quality Scale for EC also showed that there was a significant improvement in logical thinking and critical thinking,and the average score of logical thinking increased more than critical thinking.However,there was no significant improvement in creative thinking.According to Bloom’s classification of educational goals,the study explained the reason why these results appeared.It is that the educational goal of evaluating,relevant to critical thinking in English writing,is higher than the educational goal of analyzing which is relevant to logical thinking in English writing.So,critical thinking in English writing is more difficult to be cultivated than logical thinking in English writing.The educational goal of creating,relevant to creative thinking in English writing,is the highest one,which is the most difficult one to be developed,so it’s hard to improve senior high school students’ creative thinking in English writing just through blended learning.