摘要：The present study adopts a quantitative design to explore the effects of pre-designed teachers' questions as the mediation tool to scaffold the development of students' critical thinking and their discourse level writing skills in English from a sociocultural perspective. The participants were 39 sophomores from two classes. The results showed that:(1) teachers' questions targeting specific critical thinking skill in the classroom and in after-class conferences, as well as in written homework feedback were effective;(2) students backslid a little while internalizing teachers' questions concerning critical thinking;(3) students improved reliably in terms of local and global coherence in their written production with the help of teachers' questions. The findings indicate that teachers' questions facilitate students' development of critical thinking and enhance their discourse level writing skill.

摘要：The paper compares and contrasts how Chinese ESL students and American students work on a same descriptive English writing assignment that requires critical thinking. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the similarity and difference between English composition teaching in China and English composition teaching in America in regarding to incorporating critical thinking, as reflected in the use of this assignment. The study uses descriptive analysis of student writings as well as quantitative analysis of questionnaires, student grades given both from the author and several other researchers who are invited to participate in the study. The cognitive abilities in critical thinking basically consist of logical thinking, dialectical thinking, and creative thinking abilities. The study reveals that Chinese students＇ works generally flow well and they use a language that is coherent and clear. However, the study also reveals that Chinese students have difficulties in implementing critical thinking at English composition learning, and the difficulties lie in creative and dialectical thinking. To cultivate critical thinking, we need to employ affective strategies, meta-cognitive strategies-macro-abilities, and cognitive strategies-micro-abilities. The paper concludes by giving concrete examples in the area of cognitive strategies-micro-abilities in order to cultivate critical thinking.

摘要：Educators have shown increasing concern with capacity of students to engage in critical thinking and to exhibit correlation of constructs taught in to classroom to lessons applied to ongoing daily life. Graduate students in life span development were given two major assignments to study development over a person＇s life to that point in cognitive, cultural, emotional, moral, physical, and social development as well as application of major life developmental theories. One study was with a volunteer and was completed with traditional course paper format. The other study was on self- utilizing a Pecha Kucha format with inclusion on slides of personal photos and clip art that represented student development in these areas. Study results indicated increased efficacy of the presentation with integration of visual images over written reporting for to increase interest of students, to encourage exploration of symbols that uniquely represent the student＇s life as they add their meaning to the symbol, and to strengthen development of their own collaboration between eyes, left brain, and right brain. The study also indicated higher academic quality when integrating the arts modality than with the common challenges seen in written work such as depth and adherence to writing and APA style.

摘要：The paper is purposed to promote students＇ writing skills and help them perfect their cognitive structure at the same time by designing some writing tasks. The tasks are based on the contents of the teaching materials, and students can get involved in the activities by thinking critically.