A Constructivism-guided Experimental Study On The Multimedia-based English Teaching In Middle Schools Of Ethnic Minority Area

It has been many years since computers were applied to language teaching. In recent years, there is a new teaching mode with the development of the computers and internet----multimedia instruction. But there is a great difference in the use of multimedia in different areas with different effect on teaching.This paper gives a general description of the nature of constructivism and its relationship to multimedia teaching. Constructivism is the further development of behaviorism and cognitive theory which brings a fundamental revolution to English teaching. As the learner-centered learning model and the creation of authentic language context are central to constructivism, its combination with multimedia teaching makes a full use of their advantages.13junior high schools are involved in this study. The results from the questionnaires show that there is a great difference among different schools in the allocation of multimedia computers for the unequal distribution of the teaching resources in Xing’an Meng, Inner Mongolia. The use of the multimedia computers has not caught up with other places because high-tech education technology has not been integrated to the daily teaching. Besides this problem, most of the multimedia computers are not free to use. Application in advance is usually required which is also an obstacle to the full use of it. From the results of the questionnaires we can also see that most of the teachers and learners are in favor of the use of multimedia in teaching and learning, but the likeness of it is not equal to the use frequency in reality.So, a one-term study was carried out based on the problems above. Two classes in the second year of junior high school were enrolled. The class taught with multimedia guided by constructivism did better both in listening skills, English knowledge and writing skills compared with the student given classes in traditional way after the experiment. It proves that the multimedia do help the English teaching in this area. It also encourages the use of multimedia in English teaching. After the analysis of the data by SPSS19.0and Excel, the following conclusion can be drawn:there is a significant difference between the two groups in scores after the experiment. Thus, the use of the multimedia in daily teaching rather than the introduction of the multimedia equipment is the key for the improvement of the language teaching.Finally, the paper discusses the implications and the limitations of the multimedia teaching to local area. At the same time, further research on the multimedia teaching guided by constructivism is suggested.