ABSTRACT

In recent years, the education reform in China has stressed the cultivation of students’ innovation ability and the key point of quality-oriented education has been gradually shift to foster students’ critical thinking. Thus, it is meaningful and urgently needed to do studies on how to develop students’ critical thinking. When discussing the cultivation of critical thinking, most of the experts in our country focus on higher education or adult education. Actually, more researches should be done on the awareness-raising and cultivation of critical thinking in elementary education. As the most common teaching resources, textbooks are the basic references for teachers and students. A suitable critical thinking components designed in the textbooks, can help students to think critically and promote teachers to give a better guidance to help students cultivate their critical thinking.

This paper aims to study the cultivating process of critical thinking in middle school English teaching. It analyzes the critical-thinking-related materials designed in the middle school serial textbooks English, published by Oxford University Press (China) Limited and Yilin Press in 2014. The results show that the critical thinking components are embodied in both materials selection and tasks design in the serial textbooks English, but are still subordinated to the training of students’ “listening, speaking, reading and writing” skills. Based on the results, this paper puts forward some heuristic strategies to cultivate students’ critical thinking, such as using more heuristic instructive words to raise students’ critical awareness, or designing more thematic classroom activities to cultivate critical thinking ability. 

Key words: Critical Thinking; English Textbooks; Training Strategies

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABSTRACT

摘要

Chapter One INTRODUCTION-1

Chapter Two LITERATURE REVIEW-3

2.1 Definition of Critical Thinking-3

2.2 Current Studies of Critical Thinking in Education at Home and Abroad-4

2.2.1 Overseas studies of critical thinking in education-4

2.2.2 Domestic studies of critical thinking in education-5

Chapter Three RESEARCH DESIGN-7

3.1 Research Questions-7

3.2 Research Methods-7

3.3 Data Collection-8

3.4 Data Analysis-8

3.4.1 Critical thinking components in text materials of textbooks-8

3.4.2 Critical thinking components in task design of textbooks-10

3.4.3 Effectiveness analysis of critical thinking components in textbooks-12

Chapter Four RESULTS AND DISCUSSION-15

4.1 Potential Causes of Students’ Deficiency in Critical Thinking-15

4.2 Suggestions on Cultivating Critical Thinking Abilities in Middle School English Teaching-16

4.2.1 Raising students’ critical awareness-17

4.2.2 Integrating critical thinking into class teaching-18

4.2.3 Improving textbook design-19

Chapter Five CONCLUSION-22

REFERENCES-24

APPENDIX I-26