Research On The Correlation Between High School Freshmen’ English Thinking Dispositions And Thinking Skills

Although the curriculum reform has achieved some positive results in recent years,people’s understandings of thinking are not comprehensive.Researchers mainly focus on thinking from the perspective of skills or strategies,but they ignore the other important factor,that is thinking dispositions.It leaves us an incomplete picture of research on thinking.Besides,the number of researches on the relationship between thinking dispositions and thinking skills is limited.People couldn’t have a comprehensive and deep understanding of the relationship between thinking dispositions and thinking skills.They assume that thinking disposition arise spontaneously with thinking skills.Thinking dispositions need no much efforts to develop.Therefore,they emphasis much on thinking skills improvement but ignore thinking dispositions cultivation.This leads to a failure to develop thinking as a whole.To change the situation,we need to reveal leaners’ thinking from the perspective of skills and dispositions and explore the relationship between them.Taking Cognitive Development Theory,Bloom’ Taxonomy of Educational Objectives,and New National English Curriculum Standards’(NNECS)(2017 Edition,2020 Revision)as the theoretical basics,this research aims to find out the characteristics of high school freshmen’ thinking dispositions and thinking skills,and to explore the correlation between thinking dispositions and thinking skills.At the same time,the author pays attention to effects of gender,reading proficiency,and writing proficiency on high school freshmen’ thinking dispositions,thinking skills and the correlation between them.Thus,to reveal the general situation of high school freshmen’ thinking and the relationship between thinking dispositions and skills in English subject,the research tries to answer the following questions.(1)What are the characteristics of high school freshmen’ thinking dispositions in English?Are there any difference in terms of gender,reading proficiency and writing proficiency?(2)What are the characteristics of high school freshmen’ thinking skills in English? Are there any difference in terms of gender,reading proficiency and writing proficiency?(3)What is the correlation between high school freshmen’ thinking dispositions and thinking skills concerning the differences in terms of gender,reading proficiency and writing proficiency?In this study,participants are 228 freshmen from a senior high school in Nanning.They took language thinking dispositions questionnaire and language thinking skills test respectively.Their reading comprehension score and writing score are extracted from one English test to represent their reading proficiency and writing proficiency.And six English teachers in Grade One are selected to participate in a semi-structured interview in Chinese.Based on the analysis and discussions of data from questionnaire,test and interview,this research shows that:(1)The present situation of high school freshmen’ English thinking dispositions is not so satisfying.Reading proficiency significantly influences students’ thinking dispositions.(2)The general situation of high school freshmen’ English thinking skills is far from satisfaction.(3)There is a positive correlation between thinking dispositions and thinking skills.They could make contributions to the development of each other.Writing proficiency is an obvious variable to the correlation between thinking dispositions and thinking skills.Based on the above findings,some pedagogical suggestions are put forward.Firstly,school should develop school-based curriculum to cultivate students’ thinking.Secondly,teachers should create free-inquiry and collaborative atmosphere by encouraging different opinions or group works.Thirdly,teachers should cultivate students’ critical thinking from the perspective of dispositions and skills together by providing open topics to arouse students’ interest to think and their thinking professional guidance.Fourthly,teachers should encourage students to explore and construct meaning by themselves or in groups in reading.Finally,teachers should encourage and guide students to study continuation.