1 Introduction

In the past two decades, the importance of cultivating critical thinking skills in English major education has been widely recognized. As a core course in the foundational stage of English majors, intensive reading aims to enhance students' language skills, knowledge of English language and culture, as well as their abilities in critical thinking, cross-cultural communication, research, and innovation. Teaching reform emphasizes the cultivation of abilities as the guiding principle, with the cultivation of critical thinking skills as the key objective. The research on the reform of intensive reading teaching focuses on curriculum concepts, unit design, classroom activities, and emphasizes the importance of collaborative exploration and open discussion. Discourse, interaction, and thinking are closely related, and teacher-student dialogue is an important medium for students' learning and thinking development. This study adopts the perspective of socio-cultural theory and uses classroom discourse analysis methods to explore the promoting effect of teacher-student dialogue on students' thinking development in English major intensive reading classrooms under the background of teaching reform, providing inspiration for the design and implementation of teacher-student dialogue in language skills classrooms.

2 Literature Review

Sociocultural theory emphasizes the close relationship between conceptual development and the restructuring and transformation of thinking structures, distinguishing between everyday concepts and scientific concepts, and pointing out that higher-order thinking is organized by scientific concepts. The formation of scientific concepts requires learners to construct independently in social practice, and to achieve a transformation of thinking structure through the interconnection and transformation of daily concepts and scientific concepts. Discourse plays a crucial role as an intermediary tool in conceptual development, and dialogue exploration promotes knowledge construction and problem-solving through teacher-student interaction. The research on foreign language classroom interaction mainly focuses on the role of teacher discourse in promoting students' cognitive development from the perspectives of cognitive interaction theory and socio-cultural theory. This study adopts socio-cultural theory and conceptual development perspective, and uses classroom discourse analysis method to explore the promoting effect of teacher-student dialogue exploration on students' thinking development in English major intensive reading classroom, aiming to reveal how dialogue exploration regulates students' thinking process.

3 Research Design

This chapter introduces a case study aimed at exploring how teacher-student dialogue in English intensive reading classrooms can promote students' thinking development. The study adopts a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, and selects the intensive reading classroom of a second year English major in a key university in China as a case study. This classroom embodies the goals of teaching reform and has the characteristics of dialogue based and inquiry based teaching. The teacher-student dialogue accounts for more than 60% of the total classroom time. The research subjects include Professor Wang, who has 20 years of teaching experience, and 25 students, using the textbook "Intensive Reading 3 of College Speculative English Course: Society and Individuals". Teaching activities include class interaction, group discussions, and group presentations. The main form of classroom activities is teacher-student thinking and discussion around textbook topics and content.

4 Results and Discussion

Through quantitative and qualitative analysis, the characteristics of dialogue exploration in English major intensive reading classrooms and how it promotes students' thinking development have been revealed. Quantitative analysis shows that classroom dialogue is mainly characterized by teacher questioning and student active answering, with open-ended questions involving higher-order cognitive activities such as evaluation, analysis, and application. The students' answers are mainly focused on understanding and simple analysis, indicating the existence of cognitive challenges. Qualitative analysis, through specific teaching segments, demonstrates how teachers guide students from daily understanding to understanding and internalizing scientific concepts, as well as the dynamic process of students' thinking. Teachers help students expand their knowledge and abilities within the "zone of proximal development" through questioning and follow-up, promoting their awareness, understanding, and application of scientific concepts. The process of dialogue exploration is a process of mutual connection and transformation between scientific concepts and everyday concepts. Through this process, students' thinking patterns and thinking quality are improved. This study provides a new perspective from the perspective of socio-cultural theory to understand the relationship between teacher-student dialogue and cognitive development.

5 Conclusion and Implications

This study uses classroom discourse analysis to reveal the promoting effect of teacher-student dialogue exploration on students' thinking development in intensive reading classrooms. Research has found that teacher led student free participation in dialogue and open-ended, higher-order cognitive level Q&A can facilitate the development of higher-order thinking activities. Dialogue exploration promotes students to adjust their daily concepts, internalize scientific concepts, and improve their thinking quality through the integration and transformation of scientific concepts and everyday concepts. The study provides inspiration for the design and implementation of language skills classroom dialogues in the basic stage of English majors, emphasizing that classroom interaction should balance language and thinking development, and teachers should consider specific operational methods of discourse intervention. The research method is innovative, but there are also shortcomings. Future research can expand the sample size, conduct multi classroom comparative analysis, and explore the considerations and perceptions of teachers and students towards classroom dialogue.