Critical Thinking & Innovative Writing I. Heated discussion about the (1)_____of Eng- lish teaching and learning. 1) bottle-nec

Critical Thinking & Innovative Writing
    Good morning, everyone. (1) Currently, we are having a heated discussion in China about the efficiency of English teaching and learning. Admittedly, there are many things that are related to a careful discussion of this problem. Among all major problems you may have already observed, how to develop the critical thinking of students has long been a bottle-neck issue that has not received due attention and appropriate treatment in our education for long. When it comes to this point,you begin to wonder; How is such a serious issue related to our immediate concern—how to write a science story in our writing class? It depends. All depends on how you look at the relationship between creative expressing, imaginative writing and critical thinking.
    As you fully understand, rich imagination is an important source for good science story in our time. "Your words sound pedantic. Give me something more real," you say impatiently and eager to know more. Take it easy! Let us try to think these big questions before taking some practical examples. Where do we get imagination? How can we become more creative? Or,in a word,how can we write a science story that is both well-written and unique? You do not want to write something trite,do you? Keep this point in mind and you will soon realize why learning how to develop critical thinking should be one of the major concerns in our writing class.
    Firstly, we should think about the following question: what goes wrong with a traditional way of teaching?
    If we take up a critical point of view, we can identify many problems in the current education practice. For instance, in a traditional classroom, (2) we just urge students to memorize what we give them and seldom encourage them to think about a given issue from their own perspective. Nor do we ask them to go one more step and learn to examine the target issue from different perspective to try to understand it in a well-informed, interactive, creative, and critical foundation of conceptualization. (3) The unfortunate result of such ignorance is that some potential abilities in the development of creativity,critical thinking,and individualism might be suppressed.
    In the long run,this practice will do more harm to the whole society and the vitality of the society will be greatly reduced. Scientifically or academically speaking , this phenomenon will also form a hindrance in our search for a more objective understanding of the physical world around us. Any important discovery in science and technology can never do without an initial development of critical thinking in research. Pedagogically speaking, this problem also tend to induce many negative effects. Some major problems caused by the lack of emphasis and training in this aspect can be summarized as follows:
    1. Students fail to learn how to think independently.
    2. Their autonomy in creation and production is jeopardized as well.
    3. (4)Their research potential is not activated.
    4. (5) Learning becomes a process of passive knowledge of transition.
    5. Self-evaluation and self-management do not receive due attention. Another question we should consider is: what goes wrong with a traditional writing class? We think that negative things are also some big problems that threaten a successful writing class in a language learning context. Among them, critical thinking deserves a special consideration. (6) We have observed for long that a serious problem our student writers encounter in their writing is not " how to write" but " how to think". A complaint often heard from the students’ side is"I don’t know what to write in my writing class. " What is covered under this complaint could be a more intriguing problem that student writers have to face, namely, how to develop their potential in critical thinking. (7) More specifically, this statement implies the difficulty in knowing how to take a position independently and how to express oneself on a well-informed, objective, and critical foundation of argument. This could be the case especially when student writers are engaged in argumentative or academic writing.
    As writing instructors, we have the same problems in our work. There have been so many competing theories in our field that we do not know which is good for our immediate concerns. There are also so many methods that we do not know which is suitable for our class. The dilemma we have in both cases is that we do not have enough time, money and energy to try each of them and see which will work. (8) In a situation like this,we need some critical thinking to come in and help us make a sensible decision.
    For student writers,the same thing is true. You cannot expect to find a panacea to solve all the problems you may have in your studies. Meanwhile,we have to admit that English writing is a rather demanding job. A good performance in this aspect means a lot of things. Creativity, imagination, motivation, life experience, language proficiency, and proper practice are some major factors that will make a successful writer in English.
    In relation to the focus of our discussion, you may well raise a question like this; " Yes, (9) critical thinking could be something I need. But how can I relate it to my training in English writing?"This is a really good question. It will take more time than we can afford here if you want a satisfactory answer. What seems to be more urgent is that you need some tips and incentives to help you write a good science story. So,all we want to say about terminology is: critical thinking may mean a lot of things. In your case, all you need to do is; Try to be different on a reasonable condition, if you want to have some critical thinking in your writing practice. As you can see from the above words, there are two principles you need to follow if you hope to apply this concept to your writing task:try to be different while also trying to be reasonable. (10) How well you can make a balance between the two will definitely be a good indication of how well you have succeeded in using this magic power—critical thinking—in your writing training. Thanks for your attention.