Instructional Design for EFL Reading at Senior High Schools from the Perspective of Thinking Quality

Abstract

Thinking quality is one of the important parts of the core competencies of English courses at senior high schools in China, indicating the cognitive ability and level of thinking in logical, critical, and innovative aspects. This study attempts to integrate the development of cognitive skills into reading instruction, showing how to immerse students with diverse learning activities in the teaching-learning process in terms of information acquisition, information processing, and information output. And their cognitive competencies at different levels are purposefully cultivated. Specifically, they are not only nurtured at the level of understanding factual information through observation and comparison but also facilitated for the deep understanding of the text through analysis, inference, and induction. Most importantly, they are encouraged to use their linguistic knowledge creatively with evaluative abilities, thus promoting the development of their English learning and thinking ability concurrently.