Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Background of the Study
批判性思维是一种思路，旨在决定相信什么或做什么（恩尼斯，1987）。它也认为它是用来为自己，发展自己的想法，这是基于良好的推理能力。从苏格拉底到当代的时候，一直被视为一个受过教育的人的一个重要和基本技能的能力，批判性的思考。在20世纪，约翰·杜威（1938）指出，学习思考，是教育的基本目标。一些学者，包括盖德，“几乎每个人都同意，不论在哪一级，教育的主要目标之一是帮助学生发展思维能力，特别是批判性思维能力”（盖德，2017:1）。近年来，批判的思维“已成为一个时髦词语”教育界“（费舍尔，2017:1），尤其是在大学砂大学，任何学科的成功需要的人有能力，英语毕业论文，批判性地思考的东西。批判性思维通常可以培养学生学习很多课程，诸如科学和英语，然后它可以被视为一个重要的元素，英语毕业论文，有助于学生的教育相结合在一起。在一些西方国家，尤其是在美国，在过去的几十年里，探讨人员更加重视大学生批判性思维的探讨。和其他国家如韩国和日本，在大学批判的探讨，推广和运用一直非常活跃。然而，在中国，由于对中国古代文化，批判性思维已经被忽略不自觉地为多年的教育工作者和教师。在中国，教师被视为权威，学生们不得不被动地被教导，这使他们被用来逆来顺受学习者。此外，中国的语文课堂的被检定主导前面老师的指令，而学生只是在等待接受教师知识。在中国中外大学校长论坛上，耶鲁大学校长理查德·莱文，说有两个从中国大学的本科教育缺失的成分：跨学科的探讨和批判性思维的培养。幸运的是，中国教育的发展，已支付被越来越多的中国的教育工作者和教师为了提高学生的批判性思维。Critical thinking is a kind of thinking which is aimed to decide what to believe or what to do(Ennis, 1987). It is also the ability which is used to think for yourself, to develop your own ideaswhich are based on good reasoning. From the time of Socrates to contemporary, the ability tothink critically has been regarded as a significant and essential skill for an educated person. Inthe 20th century, John Dewey (1938) pointed out that learning to think is the essential goal ofEducation. To some scholars, including Gelder, “Almost everyone agrees that one of the maingoals of education, at whatever level, is to help students develop general thinking skills,especially critical thinking skills” (Gelder, 2017:1). In recent years, critical thinking “has becomesomething of ‘a buzz word’ in the educational circles” (Fisher, 2017:1), especially in collegesand universities, success in any discipline require people to have the ability to think critically.Critical thinking can be usually applied to cultivate students’ learning in many courses, suchas science and English, and then it can be considered as an essential element that helps combinethe students’ education together. In the past decades, the researchers in some western countries,especially in America, paid much more attention to college students’ critical thinking study. Andother countries as South Korea and Japan, the research, promotion and application of criticalthinking in college have been very active. However, in China, due to the Chinese ancient culture,critical thinking has been ignored by educators and teachers unconsciously for many years. InChina, teachers were viewed as the authority and students had to be taught passively, whichmade them be used to being submissive learners. Furthermore, Chinese language classroom hasbeen dominated by the teacher-fronted instruction, while students were just waiting for acceptingthe knowledge from teachers. At the Chinese-Foreign University Presidents Forum, RichardLevin, president of Yale University, said that there are two missing ingredients from Chineseuniversities’ undergraduate education: cross-curricular studies and the cultivation of criticalthinking. Fortunately, with the development of Chinese education, attention has been paid toimprove the students’ critical thinking by more and more Chinese educators and teachers.
Recent research on reading has shown that reading is a complex cognitive activity that isindispensable for adequate functioning and for obtaining information in contemporary society(Shang, 2017). Chamot (2017) defines reading skill as a process that involves the activation ofrelevant knowledge and language skills to get information across from one individual to another.Chastain (1988: 2
|
