The Impact of the Digital Learning on EFL Students' Critical Thinking Disposition

Abstract

College EFL students are learning in the digital environment due to the booming information and communication technologies. Fostering the critical thinking disposition, one of the important parts of critical thinking, is essential and necessary for the critical thinking cultivation. This study aims to investigate the status quo of the college EFL students' critical thinking disposition and the effect the digital learning environment has on fostering the critical thinking disposition. A total of 104 EFL students from a university in the south-eastern part of China were involved. The Chinese version of the Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory (CTDI-CV) was adopted, and semistructured interviews were conducted. The study shows that students possess positive critical thinking disposition in general. They have an obvious positive inclination to inquisitiveness but a weakly positive inclination to truth-seeking and systematicity. With more and time spent in the digital learning environment, the critical thinking disposition gets stronger, especially in the dimension of analyticity and systematicity. The results not only point out the features of college students' critical thinking disposition, but also offer suggestions for the future achievement of the higher education.