A Comparative Study Of Junior High School English Textbooks From The Perspective Of Critical Thinking Ability

Critical thinking is one of the core abilities of talents in the 21^st century,and cultivating students’critical thinking has become the top priority of education reform in most countries and regions in the world.In China,cultivating students’critical thinking is not only one of the strategic tasks in the medium and long-term education reform and development of the country,but also one of the important training objectives in the basic education stage.Textbook is important for teacher’s teaching and students’learning.It also plays an important part in cultivating students’critical thinking.Many scholars have conducted studies about investigating the extent of many different English textbooks in developing students’critical thinking ability in college English textbooks and high school textbooks.However,few related researches are carried out to explore the extent of junior high school textbooks in promoting students’critical thinking ability,especially the comparative studies on the two sets of textbooks are insufficient.The thesis chooses two sets of widely-used junior high school English textbooks as research objects.They are the seventh Grade textbooks of Project English（henceforth PE）and the seventh Grade textbooks Go For It（henceforth GFI）.Using Wen Qiufang’s hierarchical model of critical thinking,the thesis analyzes in detail the cultivation of students’critical thinking ability in the two sets of textbooks from two dimensions:macro（system architecture,column design）and micro（text content,exercise design）.Finally,through comparison and summary,the advantages and disadvantages of the two sets of the textbook on the cultivation of students’critical thinking ability are obtained.By analysis and comparison,the following conclusions are drawn:（1）The two sets of textbooks have a clear system structure and different emphases on critical thinking skills.The PE better cultivates the curious and open emotional traits of students,while the GFI focus more on the cultivation of deep thinking.（2）The column design of the two sets of the textbook has its own characteristics,and it pays high attention to the column of group cooperation and result display,which cultivates students’critical thinking ability.（3）The two sets of the textbook have different emphases on the cultivation of speculative and emotional traits.The PE attaches importance to curiosity,openness and integrity,while GFI attaches importance to the balanced development of the five critical traits,and pays more attention to the development and change of students’critical thinking ability.（4）The content of the two sets of the textbook is not balanced in the cultivation of critical thinking skills.PE pays attention to analysis,while GFI pays attention to analysis and evaluation.（5）The exercise design of the two textbooks attaches importance to the cultivation of students’critical thinking ability,but there are too many exercises on analysis skills and not enough attention to inference skills and evaluation skills.Based on the above research conclusions,the author suggests that education authorities specify the specific goals of critical thinking training in junior high school,and help textbook compilers and teachers to accurately grasp textbooks.This study provides the following suggestions for the textbook compilers:firstly,textbooks should cultivate critical thinking ability comprehensively and balance the proportion of critical thinking skills and emotional traits;Secondly,increase the number of controversial topics,and moderately deepen the depth and difficulty of the problems.Thirdly,Textbook compilers need to pay attention to the change of students’English level and cognitive ability in a gradient way.Fourthly,the column of mechanical repeated dialogue should be reduced and the column of group cooperation and result presentation should be increased.At the same time,the study also provides some suggestions for English teachers:firstly,teachers should pay attention to the cultivation of critical thinking,and constantly improve professional level;Secondly,according to the strengths and weakness of the two sets of textbooks,teachers can appropriately supplement teaching materials and actively guide students;Thirdly,teachers should adapt or add exercises to cultivate students’inference skills and evaluation skills in the face of the common deficiencies in the exercise design of the two textbooks.Finally,teachers should use English textbooks flexibly and encourage students to question and judge independently.