Approaches to the cultivation of college students’reflective thinking

Abstract：R eflective thinking plays an essential role in cultivating students’ creative ability. this paper it will introduce some approaches to the cultivation of college students’ reflective thinking in English reading instruction，such as the context- based teaching，the teacher- oriented teaching，flexible teaching and the interactive teaching.

Key words：reflective thinking；approaches；

Introduction

In the process of cultivating the students’ Reflective thinking，both the students and teachers meet many difficulties. Recent years，many scholars in education are tried to explore the approaches to cultivate this ability.

1 Context-based teaching

In our reading experience，we find that it difficult for us to understand the reading material even if there are few new words and difficult sentence structures. While In other cases，we may read an article with some new words or new structures in it，but we can guess the meaning of the article based on our knowledge about the topic without too much difficulty. Therefore，it is believed that in the reading instruction，the teacher should teach the background knowledge first so that students equipped with such knowledge would be able to guess meaning from the printed page. The teacher should encourage the students to do the inferential reading as possible as they can by imagination and reflective thinking. They should get a general idea of the text，inspecting and reflecting their judgment continually.

2 Student-oriented teaching

The aim of reading is to cultivate students’ problem-solving ability. Teachers should help the students to read on their own. They should aim at gradually withdrawing their guidance as their students are making some progress so that the students may eventually become independent readers. Enhancement of reflective thinking can be accomplished during while-reading by periodically stopping and asking students to search questions about the reading materials the teacher have just presented，and then the teacher may leave enough time for students to think over their answers before they reply. In order to cultivate college students’ reflective thinking in English reading instruction，the teacher may encourage the students to propose questions，always make positive respond，and never brush them off or dispraise them. Teacher’s positive feedback like “Good question！” or“Clever mind！” may well encourage students’ reflective thinking.

3 Interactive teaching

Interactive teaching refers to a direct form of collaboration in which educator and students work together in a co-active and coordinated fashion in the general education classroom. The teacher cooperating with students should set up a unit between teaching and learning in a harmonious environment. A success English teaching is devoted to forming a new bilateral relationship for the teacher and students，making the two most important elements in teaching into harmony and full play. Role-play is a very useful language learning activity where students play different roles and interact from the point of view of the roles they play. In this teaching process the teacher is encouraged to be a participator in students’ activities. In order to be effective，a role-play activity needs to be carefully set up. It usually has the following stages：

1. Defining the roles and setting up goals.

2. Pairing/grouping students and assigning roles.

3. Preparation：a）Whole class brainstorm possible questions；b）Students playing the same roles go into a group to work out the questions.

4. Role-play in pairs/groups.

5. Class viewing/demonstration.

6. Teacher gives feedback based on active monitoring.

Role play is valuable in a reading classroom for several reasons：1）it is motivating；2）students interact in small groups so that they have less pressure；3）students have the chance to practice the newly learned knowledge；4）there is enough room for reflection.

4. Conclusion

Reflective thinking ability is an important and vital topic in modern education. This paper discusses the approaches on the theoretical base without much support from experiments and investigation. Anyhow，this research tries to explore some approaches on the development of student abilities for reflective thinking.

参考文献：

[1]贾秋仙. 英语阅读与批判性思维能力（vol17，N O .5）温州大学学报.2004.17（5）：28- 30

[2]王蔷. 英语教学法教程. [M ]北京：高等教育出版社.2000：117- 134

作者简介：

孟青兰，女，（1983-），汉族，四川职业技术学院教师，助教，本科，研究方向：翻译实践。