Abstract
Critical thinking is one of the core objectives of talent training in higher education. Meanwhile, the cultivation of critical thinking skills in foreign language teaching has become more and more urgent, and it has also been written into the national standards for the training of foreign language talents. A good critical thinking includes both a skill dimension (Critical Thinking Skills) and a disposition dimension (Critical Thinking Dispositions). Critical Thinking Skills include interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation and self-regulation. This study intends to explore the current situation of the critical thinking skills of undergraduates in foreign language majors (English and Japanese) in a Normal University, and then attempts to find out the similarities and differences in critical thinking skills between English majors and Japanese majors after years of study at college. The results show that a clear difference exists between English majors and Japanese majors in overall critical thinking skills. In particular, English majors are superior to Japanese majors. Another finding is that there are also differences between the two majors in the three core sub-skills of critical thinking skills, analysis, evaluation and inference.
Highlights
Critical thinking skills play an important part in the ability of critical thinking
This study examines the current state of the critical thinking skills of English and Japanese majors, and makes a comparison in order to have a better understanding of the differences in critical thinking skills between the two foreign language majors, so that to further infer that whether there is a connection between critical thinking and different foreign languages
(3) A comparative study in critical thinking skills of English majors and Japanese majors found that English majors perform better in critical thinking than Japanese majors
Summary
It is quite necessary to promote the development of students’ critical thinking skills. This study focuses more on critical thinking skills. As early as 1998, Professor Huang Yuanshen pointed out that the foreign language majors’ absence of critical thinking exists generally, that is, foreign language teaching paid too much attention to the language structure itself and overemphasized the learning of language knowledge and language skills, such as listening, speaking, reading and writing, which is carried out merely by memorizing and comprehending. The higher cognitive skills, such as analyzing, evaluating, and creating, have not received sufficient attention, resulting in students’ absence of critical thinking skills. Recent studies (Wen, 2010; Zhang, 2018) on critical thinking between foreign language majors and other science or liberal arts majors reveal that foreign language majors are not weak in critical thinking and even superior to other majors. This study involves two major foreign languages, English and Japanese, aiming at finding out the differences in critical thinking between English majors and Japanese majors
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