| Reading is one of the most important ways that the students master the language, gain information and improve language competence.It is also the core of English teaching in Senior Middle School and main channel to develop students' reading ability as well as their language learning competence and linguistic competence.So how to develop students'reading ability is an important topic for researchers. Traditional reading instruction is a teacher-centered one. In class, teachers spend most of time on the explanation of language points and vocabularies. There is little time for the students to think independently and interact with each other. The students are considered as containers of knowledge. And their activities are not activited. The students have no opportunities to experience the process of reading at all. In order to overcome these short-comings in senior reading teaching, we need to take a best approach to teaching from a new perspective. Constructivism is currently an ideal theoretical perspective from which the drawback of senior reading teaching can. be overcome. This thesis aims at exploring that how to use Constructivism Learning Theory to guide the teaching of English reading in Senior Middle School, and to show whether it is feasible and effective to apply Constructivist Learning Theory to the teaching of English reading in Senior Middle School by implementing.According to Constructivism. Reading is a very complex psychological and cognitive process in which readers are required to tap into prior knowledge, interact with the author and the text, negotiate with others and finally construct meanings. Grellt insists that "reading is a constant process of guessing,and what one brings to the text is often more than what one finds in it"(Grellet,2001:7).According to Constructivism, students are the main constructors of knowledge, the active constructors of knowledge while the teachers are organizers and directors in the teaching progress.Learning needs to be active and social.This paper, which employs such research methods as experimental, inductive methods and case study and so on, attempts to explore how to apply Constructivist Learning Theory to the teaching of reading. The thesis consists of six chapters. Chapter 1 presents the content, the purpose as well as the significance of the thesis. Chapter 2 is literature review on Constructivism including the research achievements given by experts and scholars at home and abroad. Chapter 3 is an overview of Constructivism, which first reviews its origins and developments and then describes learning, knowledge students and teachers from the constructivist view. The theory holds the view that "Knowledge is not passively received but actively built up by the cognizing subject" (Glaserfeld, 1994:162).The cognizing subject actively constructs his own knowledge "by anchoring new information to preexisting knowledge" (Strommen Loncon,1992). In the situated environment, learners acquire knowledge with the help of others and some necessary materials. Chapter 4 is the key content, which first explores the instruction of the constructivist learning theory in design of teaching objects, self—directed learning, learning environment, cooperative learning and information resources and then discusses its application to teaching details such as lead-in, putting forward questions, cooperation and some basic reading skills. The author encourages the students to share their reading results through interaction and collaboration. Chapter 5 is a case study. The last chapter summarizes the strengths of constructivist learning theory and points out its problems that teachers should pay attention to when applying this theory.Finally, about half a year's experiment proves that it is useful and effective to apply constructivism to senior English reading instruction. However, there still exist some problems for further research.we should absorb its reasonable view and form the teaching methods that suit the English teaching practice of our country.
|
PDF Full Text Request