Reading And Writing Reflection: Dialogue Between Reader And Author

Traditional approaches to second and foreign language research and practice have viewed language as a set of abstract, self-contained systems with a fixed set of structural components and a fixed set of rules for their combination. Language learning was viewed as an internal psychological process isolated in the mind of the learner and largely free from the social and cultural contexts where ESL/EFL learning takes place. However, those approaches have been challenged in the past two decades by various sociocultural perspectives such as Vygotskian sociocultural theory, language socialization, situated learning theory, critical theory and Bakhtin's dialogic perspective. Those perspectives, though diverse in research agendas, share a similar epistemological stance that views knowledge as negotiated and co-constructed and learning as situated practices taking place in physical and social contexts. This study, however, is inspired by Bakhtin's dialogic perspective. The key underlying idea of Bakhtin's view of social interaction and social relations is that they are inherently dialogic. This view is rooted in Bakhtin's understanding of language as dialogic at the most basic level. Under this perspective, language is seen as a living tool--one that is simultaneously structured and emergent, by which we bring our cultural worlds into existence, maintain them, and shape them for our own purposes. Learning language, then, does not mean accumulating decontextualized forms or structures but rather entering into ways of communicating that are defined by specific economic, political, and historical forces.This study seeks to apply Bakhtin's theory of dialogue, especially his view of language and concept of internal dialogue to the study of education in English class in China. It seeks to find out the effect on learners from the dialogic way of education. Rather than face-to-face dialogue, reflective writing is chosen, which takes the process of reading, thinking and writing, because reflective writing is the perfect outer shell for internal dialogue. The context of the study is in a network-based writing class where the students'works could be presented and shared on the net. Two dialogic rounds, student-author dialogue and student-student dialogue, are designed. 25 participants volunteered to present on the net their reflections on the classic proses (defined as the student-author dialogue in the research) and subsequently, reflections on their peers'reflections (defined as student-student dialogue in the study). A semi-open interview was carried out after the two rounds of dialogues to make a more comprehensive understanding of students'gainings from the dialogues.The data collected were treated with the Grounded Theory method. After a laborious work of coding, conceptualizing, categorizing and patterning, the researcher systemized four characteristics, respectively, from the students'two rounds of reflections. In the first dialogic round, the classic-prose-reading reflection, the students'voices reflected four features, namely, fusion of horizon, Self-reflection concerning the theme of the prose, emotional resonance and assimilation of rhetoric devices. And in the second dialogic round, the emergence from the students included the joint-construction of meanings, employment of cognitive skills, learning from peers and self-reflection on one's own writing skills.These results show that from the two kinds of dialogues both with great minds (the author of the classic prose) and that with their peers, the students have developed themselves from three aspects: development of cognitive skills, perfection of their living philosophy and development of their English writing skills. The students'cognitive development is shown in their effective processing of the reading materials where skills of comprehension, classification, generalization and evaluation were involved. The students also perfected their living philosophy or beliefs in the multivoiced dialogic space by dialoging with great minds and their peers. The students writing skills are also developed in the two rounds of dialogues. In the first dialogic round, the students produced abundant sentences with different rhetoric devices and in the second dialogic round, the students learned from each other and reflected on their own writing skills. Moreover, the characteristics of the dialogic space and the function of reflective writing are also explored in the thesis.On the basis of these findings, some suggestions are put forward for EFL teaching in China. Firstly, a genuine dialogic space should be set up to promote classroom interaction. Secondly, reflective writing may be adopted as a method to encourage students'interaction with curricular material. Finally, proper teaching materials should be chosen to promote students'motive in learning. The charm of the text in language and ideas is the engine to promote students'emergence. The limitation of the study exists in the range and longitudinality of data collection and insufficiency of the exploration of students'language development. This study has both theoretical and practical significance. Theoretically, the dialogic approach to EFL teaching and learning has enriched the SLA research. Practically, it helps to revive the life of language in EFL teaching and learning by opening a dialogic space in class.