An Empirical Study On The Cultivation Of Critical Thinking To English Reading Teaching In Junior School

The Ministry of Education issued the Opinions on Comprehensively Deepening Curriculum Reform and Implementing the Fundamental Task of Establishing Moral Talents,which proposed the Core Competencies and Values for Chinese Students’ Development,focusing on cultivating students’ thinking ability including cultivating their critical thinking.Moreover,critical thinking is an essential part of thinking ability,it plays an irreplaceable role in the development of thinking ability.However,there is still a general lack of critical thinking among students in the English reading teaching in junior school at this stage.Therefore,students’ critical thinking needs to be improved urgently.Remarkably,English reading teaching is an important part of the English subject,and it’s also an effective way to cultivate students’ critical thinking.This study takes students and English teachers form a junior school of Longyan city in Fujian province as the research objects,based on constructivist learning theory,schema theory and critical thinking skills theory.Therefore,questionnaire survey,interview and classroom observation are used as research methods to investigate the situation of students’ critical thinking training in the English reading teaching of the school.This study aims to explore the following questions:(1)What is the current situation of critical thinking of junior school students in English reading teaching?(2)What are the factors that influence students’ critical thinking in English reading teaching?(3)What specific teaching methods and strategies can cultivate students’ critical thinking?The results are as following:(1)The students who are in the middle school generally lack critical thinking.Students generally do not perform well in inference,analysis,questioning,evaluation and criticism when they are in the process of reading.(2)Through researching,the following factors have been found: traditional teaching concepts still dominate teachers’ thinking;teachers’ teaching methods are not suitable for promoting the development of students’ critical thinking;students’ reading literacy and critical thinking awareness is generally weak;and the professional development of teachers still needs to be improved.According to the research results,this study proposes relevant teaching suggestions.First,teachers can design speculative reading questions for students to stimulate their further thinking,in this way,students will think deeply.Second,teachers can guide students to put forward different points of view,teachers had better give full play to the role of students as the main body of learning.Third,teachers organize students to conduct exploratory learning in teaching procedures,since exploratory learning is advocated as one of the ways of learning in new curriculum reform and it is helpful for students to improve their critical thinking.Fourth,teachers should improve their own critical thinking and deeply learn the meaning and value of critical thinking.Finally,all the above aim at helping teachers to cultivate students’ critical thinking in the process of English reading teaching.