A Study Of Teachers' Mediation In The Teaching Of English As A Foreign Language

The role of teachers who work as mentors of students is becoming increasingly critically important in the process of putting the concept of quality-oriented education into effect since education for all-round development was advocated by Chinese Ministry of Education. How should teachers adjust themselves to help students to learn more effectively and guide them to learn autonomously? The main concern of this thesis is to find a satisfying and convincing answer to this question. The author resorts to teachers'mediation for the ultimate solution.Firstly, this thesis briefly overviews some previous researches on humanism, introduces three outstanding scholars in the field, and explores its implication for EFL, Feuerstein's theory on mediation, and the twelve features of his theory. Next, the thesis portraits the design of a survey, which includes the research questions, research subjects and research methods. The survey is conducted by means of questionnaires, interviews, empirical classroom observations, etc. Then, on the basis of the research done in the preliminary period, the author makes a detailed analysis of the results obtained from the statistics, interviews and empirical classroom observations and presents a summary of the findings. Finally, the author arrives at the conclusion that the cut-down of the mismatches on the understanding of teacher's mediation between students and teachers in accordance with the communication between them will greatly enhance the excursion of teachers'roles as mediators in classroom.Classroom mediation plays an important role in teachers'development and learners'training. Only by changing traditional teaching methods and adopting new pedagogies that suit leaner autonomy in the context of current teaching conditions, can EFL teachers meet the requirements of education reform.