A Study On The Application Of Critical Thinking In The Teaching Of English Writing In Senior High School

As the National English Curriculum Standards for Senior High School proposed that English discipline plays an important role in cultivating students,it aims to develop students’ core competencies in four aspects: language ability,cultural awareness,thinking quality and learning ability.(Ministry of Education,2018)Besides,thinking quality is a kind of mental characteristics which reflects the core competencies of English discipline.Critical thinking,embodied in thinking quality,makes great contributions to the cultivation of creative talents in the new era.Meanwhile,it can also improve students’ ability of thinking individually,analyzing and solving problems.Writing,as a complicated mental activity,requires students to clarify the writing requirements,process the information in the context and express their ideas with logic thinking in writing form,which is one of the important standards to measure students’ English ability.However,affected by the stress of college entrance examination,many English teachers over-emphasize the accuracy of the language and structure in the writing teaching while don’t give enough attention to students’ thinking in writing teaching.Moreover,most students’ writing is devoid of logicality,coherence and innovations in content.In view of the inseparable relationship between language and thinking,and the important role of cultivating talents of English discipline,it has been an inevitable choice for English teaching and research to improve students’ critical thinking ability in writing teaching.Currently,most studies mainly focus on the correlation between college students’ critical thinking and their English writing proficiency while the research on critical thinking in senior high school writing teaching is scarce.As a result,in this thesis,the author aims to explore how to apply critical thinking to improve high school students’ writing proficiency.The study mainly explores the following three questions:(1)What’s the overall level of high school students’ critical thinking and English writing proficiency?(2)Can the cultivation of critical thinking in the teaching of English writing in high school help to improve students’ overall writing proficiency?(3)What aspects can the cultivation of critical thinking in the teaching of English writing in senior high school improve students’ writing proficiency?(accuracy,clarity,relevance,logic,profundity)In this study,two parallel classes of Grade One in No.1 Middle School of Chongqing University Town are selected as participants,and the research lasts two semesters.Class 5 is the controlled class in which the teacher still adopts the previous teaching methods in writing classes,meanwhile,class 4 is the experimental class and the teacher cultivates students’ critical thinking in writing teaching.Before and after the experiment,students’ critical thinking levels are tested by using CCTST.Besides,students’ writing proficiency is tested as well and then judged by Scoring Scale of Critical Thinking Writing which includes five dimensions.The researcher randomly selects 3 students from the experimental class for interview after the experiment,and these students are from three different writing levels: high,medium,and low.It aims to know students’ feelings and suggestions on writing classes which incorporate critical thinking training.In the experiment,all collected data is analyzed by SPSS24.0.The research results are as follows:(1)Students’ overall critical thinking and English writing proficiency are roughly in middle level.(2)Students’ critical thinking is positively correlated to their overall writing proficiency.(3)To improve students’ English writing proficiency,the six sub-skills of critical thinking can be cultivated in the process of writing teaching.The cultivation of critical thinking in senior high school English writing teaching can improve students’ English writing proficiency in four dimensions(accuracy,clarity,relevance,logic).Above research results show that the application of critical thinking in writing teaching is effective.Specifically,cultivating students’ critical thinking in writing teaching in senior high school can help to improve students’ English writing proficiency and their critical thinking is also improved as well.Based on the research results,the author puts forward some suggestions for the cultivation of critical thinking in writing teaching and demonstrates some limitations of this study.