An Investigation Into The Cultivation Of Students’ Thinking Quality In The "Continuation Task" Teaching In Senior High School

With the promulgation of the National English Curriculum for Senior High School in the year of 2017(hereinafter referred to as NECS),the English key competencies,including the language proficiency,learning ability,cultural awareness and thinking quality,has become a beacon to conduct the English language teaching.In this regard,this thesis attempts to combine the cultivation of students’ thinking quality with continuation task teaching under the guidance of Krashen’s Input Hypothesis,Swain’s Output Hypothesis and Benjamin Bloom’s Taxonomy in the background of the English key competencies.Being a brand-new question type of English writing teaching,continuation task can well embody students’ writing ability.At the same time,students’ thinking quality is very demanding in the course of its completion in that students are required to work hard to activate their previous knowledge in the process of reading and writing.And they are also required to simplify the sophisticated language input so as to make it become the basis for their language output.Meanwhile,it is highly demanding of students’ ability to put their ideas together in a coherent or logical way to present a convincing argument in a specific context.An old Chinese saying in The Analects puts it that he who learns but does not think is lost;he who thinks but does not learn is in danger,which makes it clear that active thinking activities can promote our leaning,and learning can in turn shape our thinking mode.So,the process of reading and writing in the continuation task can be regarded as the process that students actively carry out thinking activities.More importantly,continuation task integrates the English reading and writing teaching into one medium,which means that students are required to analyze the writing style of the reading materials,to synthesize and extract key information from the written text and to evaluate the writer’s intended opinions and emotions so as to make their writing more authentic and mindful.Meanwhile,an excellent supplement for the incomplete reading text not only needs students to pay special attention to the clarity of their ideas or the logical development of their arguments in their writing,but also needs them to dare to express their novel ideas,to criticize the opinions conveyed by the writers in the reading material.That is to say,all the thinking traits embodied in students’ final composition can be considered as important elements of students’ thinking quality.So,we have good reasons to believe that continuation task has its unique advantages in promoting the development of students’ thinking quality.Based on the previous studies,this research tries to investigate the current situation of the cultivation of students’ thinking quality in the continuation task teaching in Zhangjiakou No.1Senior Middle School.It also tries to explore practical and effective solutions to the potential problems that hinders the teacher from developing students’ thinking quality.The research questions of the thesis are as follows:(1)What are the general characteristics of the cultivation of the senior high school students’ thinking quality?(2)What are senior high school English teachers’ perception regarding the importance on cultivating students’ thinking quality in the teaching of the continuation task?(3)What are the potential obstacles for senior high school English teachers to cultivate students’ thinking quality by taking continuation task teaching as a medium?Questionnaire and interview are two important research methods applied to this research.And the research data are accumulated from the teachers and students in Grade 2 in Zhangjiakou No.1 Senior Middle School.Based on the data analysis by means of the SPSS26.0,major findings of this thesis are presented in the following:Firstly,with respect to the present situation of the cultivation of students’ thinking quality,the results of students’ questionnaire indicates that the whole situation of the cultivation of their thinking quality leaves much to be desired.The mean values of students’ logical thinking,critical thinking and creative thinking is worrying,and what makes the matter worse is that the individual difference on the cultivation of students’ thinking quality is extremely significant.As a whole,among the three thinking traits,the cultivation of students’ logical thinking is relatively better than another two thinking traits.Secondly,with respect to the teachers’ perception regarding the importance and preparation for cultivating students’ thinking quality in continuation task teaching,the results of the research reflect that a majority of teachers are lacking of deep understanding about the thinking quality,and they still overemphasize students’ examination grades in the process of their teaching,which means that the cultivation of students’ thinking quality is not given enough attention in continuation task teaching.Thirdly,as for the affecting factors in cultivating students’ thinking quality,the analysis on the teachers’ interview shows that the causes to students’ poor thinking quality performance in the continuation task teaching are very complicated.And the main obstacles can be summarized as follows: inappropriate teaching materials,difficulty in conducting evaluation on the final outcome of the cultivation of students’ thinking quality,the influence brought by the class size,students’ individual difference in the language proficiency,limitation of the class teaching time,teachers’ lack of related in-service training opportunities,pressures brought by the standardized test scores,students’ unbalanced development of thinking quality,teachers’ teaching experience and so on.All of these hinder the development of students’ thinking quality in continuation task teaching.Based on the investigation on the current situation of the development of students’ thinking quality and high school English teachers’ perception regarding the importance and the preparation for cultivating students’ thinking quality in continuation task teaching,suggestions for better cultivating students’ thinking quality are put forward in terms of three aspects,namely the design of the English curriculum,foreign language teachers and students themselves.It is expected that this thesis can bring high school English teachers some implications to promote the cultivation of students’ thinking quality in the process of continuation task teaching in the near future.