Reflections on Cultivating Critical Thinking in Foreign Language Courses in the Context of Integrating Ideological and Political Theories in All Courses

The education reform of integrating ideological and political theories in all courses is crucial in fostering virtue through education.In the new era,foreign language courses are increasingly prominent in moral education.Learning a language is not just about mastering its language form but also about critically examining the cultural connotations and thinking patterns embedded within it.Therefore,cultivating students’critical thinking skills should be a key focus in foreign language education.First,this paper examines the importance of fostering students’critical thinking in foreign language courses.Second,considering the characteristics of Chinese college foreign language courses,we propose that if we want to cultivate critical thinking among students through foreign language courses,we need to effect pattern transformations across four aspects:teaching philosophy,teaching content,teaching methodology,and teaching evaluation.These transformations also present requirements for foreign language teachers.They should focus on enhancing their comprehensive literacy,including ideological and political literacy,teaching design skills,and the ability to integrate teaching materials with logical thinking.And China’s Standards of English Language Ability(the CSE)serves as an important reference indicator for implementing these transformations.

Calibrating English Language Courses with Major International and National EFL Tests via Vocabulary Range

With the purpose of describing levels of English language proficiency expected at each stage in our school＇s Diploma and BA programs, we attempted to compare the level of courses with national standards as embodied in the national TEM4 and TEM8, and with international standards as embodied in international examinations such as Cambridge ESOL, and other descriptions such as the Common European Framework via one quantifiable parameter： vocabulary range. This is justified as vocabulary range offers an approximate but useful guide to the level of a course or a testing system. We hypothesize that the language competence at different levels of our program matches various standard proficiency examinations. Paul Nation＇s Range software was used both in its standard form using his three BASEWRD files and in an adapted form adding the authors＇ own BASEWRD files extrapolated from various levels of our textbook series. This enabled us to compare the vocabulary range of our courses with that of both national and international examinations where word lists are available or recoverable. Research results supported the hypotheses suggested.

Discussion on the Teaching Development of Thai Courses in Universities

In recent years,with the expansion and extension of China’s free trade platform,construction has gradually developed toward Southeast Asia and South Asia,thus resulting in the phenomena whereby Thai language courses have become more common and more universities have begun to cultivate Thai language majors.In this process,improving the effectiveness of Thai courses has become the key;therefore,schools and Thai language teachers should pay attention to this.In order to achieve the language teaching goal put forward by the Ministry of Education,it is necessary to accelerate the development of Thai courses in universities and explore a new development path for them,so that the teaching quality of Thai courses can be guaranteed.Based on this,this paper mainly discusses the development history of the curriculum of Thai language courses in universities.