An Empirical Study On The Application Of Mediation Theory In The Context Of English Teaching

Thanks to the globalization of economy, English has already become the most frequently used language all around the world. In China, more and more attention has been paid to English learning. Learning a foreign language is not an easy task, but a long and complex process, which needs the joint efforts of students and teachers. At present, many researchers pay much attention to the researches on learner autonomy, while they neglect a very important fact that teachers play a very important role in students'autonomous learning, they act as a guide and mediator. Israeli Psychologist Feuerstein, who is the advocator of teacher as mediator, suggests that right from birth, the baby's learning is influenced by some significant adults---at first parents, and then becomes teaches and more able peers. He regards these important figures in the child's learning as mediators. Therefore, as mediators, the responsibility of language teachers is to select effective mediation tools to stimulate the students'interest of learning, and then supply comprehensive language materials for the learners, help them become autonomous in learning.The research instruments in this paper are mainly interviews and questionnaires. Eight college English teachers and twenty sophomores (non-English majors) were selected to participate in the study. All of them were supposed to finish the questionnaire designed by William and Burden (2000). After the questionnaire was finished, five teachers and ten students were interviewed. Through exploring teachers'and students'perceptions of the twelve mediation tools, the author hopes to find that in the process of facilitating learners'autonomous learning, whether English teachers can make good use of the mediation tools to help the students obtain independent thinking and problem-solving abilities or not.Based on the findings and analyses above, the study suggests that in order to improve the effectiveness of English teaching, English teachers should further arouse students'interest, develop their sense of competence, respect their individuality, create appropriate challenges for them and make them face the challenges actively, help them learn to control their own behavior so that they can move smoothly into their next level of development with better strategies and become effective autonomous learners in the end. If the future classroom becomes mediation-based, students'language learning ability can be improved greatly.