3. Necessity of Critical Thinking in College English Classroom

3.1 Critical thinking in present college English classroom

With the development of New Curriculum Reform, it still remains a swelling on the skin that the classroom teaching has not been transformed totally from the traditional classroom to a brand new one. In traditional classrooms, teachers get hold of the whole classroom, remaining the absolute controller of the lessons. They make most of the time in class to teach students vocabulary and grammar to an utmost degree. Students are considered as the container of accepting knowledge with no change, accepting all the feed and well-digested knowledge. As a result, teachers are the authority in students’ eyes. Therefore, it is no doubt that students will lack critical thinking towards knowledge to be learned. Here are some reasons for the phenomenon.

First of all, many teachers have a misunderstanding towards critical thinking without a thorough understanding. They always devote themselves to passing on knowledge, while neglecting cultivating critical thinking. The behaviors that students ask questions about the textbook and teachers are treated as violation of order in class. In traditional culture, the classroom order should be obeyed in order to respect teachers. However, the enthusiasm of initiative exploration is hurt in this process. Therefore, cultivating critical thinking remains belittled in classroom teaching. The self-esteem of students who dare to doubt and excel at doubting is often ruined at price, and as a consequence the students are as like as two peas. Sometimes they become convinced of everything in class, sometimes they get bored of study. However, it never promotes the development of critical thinking.

What’s more, language is just the tool of thinking, while the competence of English in college still lacks of speaking. The ability of English is stagnant in the situation of reading without speaking. So when it comes to doubting and criticizing, the limited ability of speaking sets a limitation to expressing thoughts and probing into the sharp points of the issue. Because of the lack of English competence, many students lose their confidence in critical thinking in English classroom, only focusing on learning language knowledge to make up the shortcomings in language use and communication competence, thus leaving critical thinking far behind. The low level of speaking English has a great impact on cultivating critical thinking.来`自^优尔论*文-网www.youerw.com

Moreover, the lack of critical thinking elements in traditional culture plays a vital role, too. For thousands of years, the golden mean of the Confucian school stays a dominant status in Chinese culture. The habit of being the same in harmony has influenced generations of Chinese people. For the purpose of being accepted as a member of the group, the personal characteristics are abandoned to reach a balance. Furthermore, the feudalistic system advocates respecting teachers and following them. To some extent, this mode of thinking restricts the pergence of thinking, which is contrary to critical thinking. Critical thinking is easy to foster against the cultural background of inpidualism and wisdom-worship. Therefore, the negative influence of traditional culture may be the root of lacking critical thinking in Chinese.

Here critical thinking is the only one to be discussed, although it is in close connection with innovative thinking. In practical thinking, these two are often difficult to pide. In teaching English writing, brainstorming is used to gather information, and then critical thinking is employed to select what is useful to the passages. It is important to recognize the reasonable parts in existing knowledge, protecting the critical thinking and innovative thinking.