关键词: 工具性; 思维; 心智技能; 概念; 自上而下; 建构主义

Abstract: English is the instrument of communication and thinking. The former has drawn considerable attention and gained wide practice. The latter, however, draws little attention and still belongs to a kind of theoretical hypothesis. Therefore, it’s necessary to explore the thinkingoriented instrumental nature of English, probing its internal workings, revealing the channel to practice it and leading it from theory to practice. The paper adopts the multi-level intelligential skills theory as the theoretical foundation and conducts an empirical and theoretical analysis of what the thinking-oriented instrumental nature of English contains and how it can be turned into practice. The study shows that English consists of both basic linguistic-symbol-processing intelligential skills and advanced concept-processing intelligential skills. While the former is the means of communication, the latter is the instrument of thinking. According to the paper, where students can process linguistic symbols automatically, their English teacher should lead them to construct in top-down concept-processing activities such advanced intelligential skills as analyzing, synthesizing, comparing and making a judgment. It’s on this basis that the thinking-oriented instrumental function of English can be fulfilled.

Keywords: instrumental nature; thinking; intelligential skill; concept; top-down; constructivism