The Impact of English Debate on Developing College Students’ Critical Thinking Skills

• 作者: WANG Ben XU Zi Ming Hui
• 来源期刊: 美中外语:英文版
• 学科: 文学
• 关键词: English debate critical thinking ATTITUDE college cultivation
• 年，卷（期）: 2020,（6）
• 页码范围: 171-177
• 页数: 7页
• 分类号: H31

摘要

Cultivating students with excellent critical thinking skills and good communication capabilities is the fundamental goal of college education.English debate is now arousing more and more attention in college education while more colleges in China are promoting English debate clubs and activities to introduce such an English learning tool for college students.The current study managed to conduct a questionnaire on 92 college students in China who had English debating experience for their attitude and acceptance of English debate as a useful tool for English study.The study showed that though different grades took a different attitude towards the positive impact of English debate on English study,all of the respondents agreed that English debate brought them practical benefit for English study and acted positively in many aspects of English skills or improvement on their critical thinking abilities.College students as freshmen and sophomores did not react as positively as juniors and seniors did.Among the seniors,87.5%of them agreed that English debate equipped them with advanced critical thinking abilities.The acknowledgement of the merits of English debate increases along with their grades.In detailed parts of benefits brought by English debate,respondents reacted differently ranging from oral improvement,listening skills,to confidence receiving and logical thinking.The statistics also illustrated that respondents had various interests in debate topics covering.For sake of limitation of students-only questionnaire,room for improvements is put forward in discussion part to include more teachers in the research.