An Experimental Study On The Cultivation Of Senior High School Students’ Critical Thinking Ability In English Reading Class

English reading plays a very important part in English learning.According to the New Curriculum Standard of General Senior High Schools(2017)issued by the Ministry of Education,students are required to achieve the four major core competences of the English subject: linguistic ability,cultural character,thinking quality and learning ability.Among them,the thinking quality emphasizes students’ ability to analyze and solve problems,and to observe and understand the world from a cross-cultural perspective.However,in the senior high school English reading class,many teachers are accustomed to using traditional teaching method,which is mainly focused on the teaching of vocabulary and grammar.Therefore,in order to help students to have overall development,it is very important for teachers to cultivate students’ critical thinking abilities.This thesis is intended to make an experimental study on the cultivation of senior high school students’ critical thinking ability in English reading class.Based on Wen Qiufang’s Hierarchical Model,Cognition-Discovery Learning Theory,Constructive Teaching Theory,this thesis tries to discuss the following two issues:1.What teaching activities will help to cultivate senior high school students’ critical thinking abilities in English reading class?2.What effect does the cultivation of students’ critical thinking abilities bring to their English reading ability?The author selects two classes in a senior high school in Ningde to carry out the experiments.In the research,the CTDI-CV scales,interviews,tests,and other research instruments are used to collect the experimental data.Then,the author used SPSS software to analyze the experimental data.The research has found that some teaching activities,such as making a prediction,analyzing useful information,using thinking map,developing group discussion and making a summary are suitable in English reading class to cultivate senior high school students’ critical thinking abilities.By analyzing the experimental data,the author found that the cultivation of senior high school students’ critical thinking abilities can help to improve their reading comprehension.Also,the cultivation of students’ critical thinking ability in English reading class has brought improvements to both teachers and students.In this thesis,some practical implementations are made for the teaching of English reading,which will be helpful to the teaching of English reading in senior high schools.