An Investigation Into Teachers’ Mediation In College English Reading-Writing Course

The role of English teacher has been a hot and lasting topic for a long time because of English teacher’s significant role in language teaching process.With the emergence of updating teaching concepts such as promoting lifelong learning and whole-person development,educators endeavor to explore a new and more suitable role for teacher to facilitate classroom interaction and efficient English classroom.Mediation theory proposes that there exist some significant figures around children and they play an important role in mediating the process of children’s cognitive development.Reuven Feuerstein defines these significant people as mediators and presents twelve key features of mediation,which brings a profound enlightenment to the shift of teacher’s role.What’s more,since the College English Curriculum Requirements published by Ministry of Education in China in 2007 aims to cultivate students’ comprehensive English abilities and certain reading and writing capacities,the teacher’s role as a mediator is significant for students to become independent thinkers,problem solvers and lifelong learners in the ever-changing society.Moreover,the previous studies on teacher’s mediation in China mainly focused on theory speculation or investigation through self-report questionnaire,little research has looked at teacher’s mediation in real classroom.This research aims to explore the main features of teachers’ mediation and the evaluation of teachers’ mediation from students in College English reading-writing course by using both qualitative and quantitative methods like naturalistic classroom observation,questionnaire and interview all together,so as to gain a full picture of teachers’ mediation in College English reading-writing course.The present research has yielded the following findings:Firstly,in College English reading-writing course,among the twelve mediation features,“shared intention”,“control of own behavior” and “sharing” are the first three most obvious features of teachers’ mediation that are observed in the class,which constitute the main features of teacher’s mediation.Secondly,in College English reading-writing course,among the twelve mediation features,“sharing”,“shared intention” and “control of own behavior” are the first three most obvious features of teachers’ mediation that students have perceived.However,“individuality”,“a sense of competence” and “awareness ofchange” are ranked as the three least obvious features of teachers’ mediation.Thirdly,in College English reading-writing course,teachers’ mediation of“shared intention”,“control of own behavior” and “sharing” that are observed in the class are basically in accordance with the top three obvious features of teachers’ mediation that students have perceived except the subtle differences in the rank of order,hence,“shared intention”,“control of own behavior” and “sharing” are well perceived by students and gain relatively high evaluations from students.However,the big differences between teachers’ mediation features observed in the class and teachers’ mediation features perceived by students exist in the “individuality”,“a sense of competence”,“purpose beyond here and now” and “goal-setting” according to the rank of order.The former two features observed are more obvious than they are perceived,while the latter two features observed are less obvious than they are perceived.Fourthly,in College English reading-writing course,teachers’ mediation of“sharing” via group work facilitates students’ language learning development and cognitive development.Moreover,it is helpful to cultivate students to become peer mediators,which will be an important supplement for teacher’s mediation in the class.Some implications have been drawn from the results of the research and corresponding suggestions are provided for the actual implementation of teachers’ mediation in the College English reading-writing course.