An Empirical Study Of The Effects Of Problem-based English Reading Teaching On Senior High School Students’ Critical Thinking

It is clearly pointed out in the English Curriculum Standards for Senior High Schools(2017 Edition)that critical thinking is an important part of the core quality of English discipline---the quality of thinking.The Curriculum Standard also emphasizes that the cultivation of critical thinking should run through the whole process of English teaching,and students should improve the quality of thinking through the study of the course.However,in English teaching,due to the teacher’s teaching concept and teaching mode as well as the school’s curriculum setting,the high school students lack critical thinking abilities,as evidenced by their inferential,evaluative,and analytical abilities,and their creativity.It should also be noted that students’ critical thinking disposition is fairly weak as well,reflected in their awareness and attitude concerning truth seeking,inquisitiveness,openness,maturity and systematic approaches to thinking.This study attempts to explore the cultivation of critical thinking in reading teaching with problem-based learning(PBL)as the entry point.PBL is regarded as an innovative teaching model that can develop students’ innovative and critical thinking skills.It puts students in the context of specific problems,and enables them to analyze,deduce,synthesize and explore problems through independent and cooperative learning,so as to continuously develops students’ critical thinking.In this study,73 students from two science classes in senior one of a high school in Guangzhou were selected as the research participants,and a 16-week teaching experiment was conducted.The experimental class adopted the PBL model,while the control class accepted the regular English reading teaching.The study aims to answer two research questions:(1)What are the effects of PBL on high school students’ critical thinking disposition?(2)What are the effects of PBL on high school students’ critical thinking skills ?For the above two problems,different research methods and tools are involved.Questionnaire survey is used for the first research question,and teaching experiment is used to investigate the second research question.Additionally,semi-structured interviews and classroom observation are used to supplement the study and discuss of these two research questions.Finally,SPSS25 software was used to analyze the collected data by independent sample test and paired sample test.Through the analysis,the following two conclusions are as follow: 1)PBL can effectively improve students’ overall critical thinking disposition level.Among its seven dimensions,the four dimensions such as Inquisitiveness,open-mindedness,maturity,and analysis are easier to cultivate than other three dimensions such as truth seeking,systematical and self-confidence.2)PBL has positive effects on the three core skills of critical thinking: analysis,inference and evaluation.The above results indicate that PBL teaching mode has a positive promoting effect on improving students’ critical thinking ability.The results of this study have certain enlightenment and reference value for the application of PBL teaching model and the cultivation of critical thinking in high school students.