通过阅读博客培养学习者思辨能力的实证研究

An Empirical Study on the Development of Learners' Critical Thinking through Readers' Blogs

思辨能力培养是教育中不可或缺的环节。在我国,针对外语学习者思辨能力的教学和研究越来越受到重视。本文以网络环境下英语阅读博客为研究素材,分析学生思辨能力在博客中的具体表现,探索如何运用博客提高学生的思辨阅读能力。研究对象为某工科大学英语专业二年级泛读班的24位同学每周发布的阅读博文。分析结果表明,学生在表述相关性、联系外部经验或知识、批判性评估和提出疑惑四个方面的思辨能力有较大提高。

Critical thinking skills are essential to foreign language learners, but they were not given much attention until recently. With the wide application of blogs in language teaching, the usefulness of blogs in writing courses has been explored, hut their role in increasing reading proficiency and critical thinking in reading courses is less clearly understood. This article analyzes the blog postings for evidence of critical thinking skills in college-level EFL reading classrooms. Twenty-four students in a college-level EFL reading class participated in the study. Over the course of the semester, the students posted blog entries about a novel they read outside the class on a weekly basis. Content analysis of the blog postings revealed that students＇ critical thinking developed in terms of relevance, outside knowledge or experience, critical assessment, and expression of ambiguities. The results suggest that blogging may be usefully implemented to improve students＇ critical thinking and autonomous learning outside the class.