Constructivism And Macrostrategies For FLT

Constructivism is a psychological theory that develops rapidly in recent years. It has deep-going philosophical background, and theoretically originates from Piaget's genetic epistemology and Vygotsky's view of historical development of culture and thought. Constructivism holds the view that knowledge must be actively constructed within the cognitive structure of every individual, so it is fundamentally personal, but dependent on experiences in the learning environment and on social interactions. The theory has been applied in many fields, including sociology, international relationships, ethics and various subjects in education. Although there are a variety of foreign language teaching strategies, they either have no theoretical support or are based on outdated theories. The field of foreign language teaching (FLT) is in urgent need of a theory with sound psychological support and practical implications. So the application of constructivism in the field of foreign language teaching will bring us significant results.Combining the view of constructivism, which emphasizes cognition, active construction, experience and environment in the process of knowledge construction, with the features of FLT, this dissertation presents a constructivist model of the macrostrategies for FLT, including cognition and autonomy as its core, experience andinterest in the middle layer, and social relevance in the out layer. Based on the constructivist model of macrostrategies for FLT, five constructivist macrostrategies for FLT are presented, they are, self-awareness of language construction, activating intuitive heuristics, contextualizing linguistic input, integrating language skills and raising cultural consciousness.In this dissertation, an experimental study is conducted upon non-English majors to test the effectiveness of the constructivist macrostrategies for FLT. The experimental study has lasted for half year. In the experimental study, three psychological factors (motivation, self-efficacy and attribution), which are directly related to English achievements, and English term achievement are used as dependent variables to test if there are some significant differences between the experimental group and the control group. The findings of the experimental study show that there are significant differences in some factors and second-order factors between these two groups.The result of the study proves that the theory of constructivism is valuable and practical in the field of FLT. So constructivism finds a new applied field, and foreign language teaching finds a new theory as its guidance. Furthermore, the result of the experimental study provides a forceful evidence to oppose Chen Yuanxiang's view that constructivism is of no use in the field of FLT.