| Interaction refers to the harmonious resonance of teaching and learning, through which students are enlightened to discover by teachers, and in turn they force teachers to stimulate, with teachers as leaders and students as subjects. A lot of foreign educationists and psychologists, from different angles, have made some theoretic researches about the importance of implementing interaction and its pedagogic significance. Constructivists (e.g. Piaget, Bruner & Kelly, etc.) believe that students' learning is a process of active meaning construction. So, in this learning process, teachers should help and encourage students, but not just regard them as passive information receivers. The supporters of Interaction Hypothesis (e.g. Long, Krashen, etc.) hold that the interpersonal interaction is helpful to people's intrapersonal interaction-the process of assimilation and accommodation of knowledge. These two kinds of interactions are closely related and affected with each other, which promotes students' language learning. The socio-cognitivists (e.g. Vygotsky) also believe that children's working together with another person, either an adult or a more competent peer at a level that is above their present capabilities will facilitate their language learning. This idea is greatly reflected in Vygotsky's notion of "Zone of Proximal Development" (ZPD). With the educational development and reform in our country, some domestic scholars (e.g. Wu Kangning, etc.) have also made some theoretic studies of the classroom interaction from the points of educational sociology, psychology, etc.. But in the practice of our English language teaching, the lack of interaction is a common thing. Though in junior classes, there are some interactions, the interactive models are simple, such as playing games, role-playing, guessing riddles, and so on. For the senior English majors' classroom interactions, there is little systematic research until now. Thus, this thesis is going to have an investigation in this field under the frame of Piaget, Krashen, and Vygotsky, et al.'s theory of interaction.In this thesis, the writer investigated the senior English majors' classroom interactionswith a questionnaire, which is composed of 18 questions. The former 17 need to be answered with choices, through which we can get some information about the current senior English majors' classroom interactions from different perspectives and the possible reasons leading to this situation. The last question needs to be answered simply, which requires students to have a consideration for their ideal classroom interactions. The questions are designed, referring to some materials (e.g. Learning Language through Communication, P.R. Allen et al., 1986; Questioning and Teaching: A Manual of Practice, J.T. Dillon, 1988, etc.) and together with the writer's own experiences. The participants of this investigation are 34 English majors in Grade 3 and 103 in Grade 4 from the COFS of Guangxi Normal University. The research results are the following:1. There really exists a problem of interaction insufficiency in the senior English majors' classrooms. And in some courses there isn't any interaction at all.2. From interaction patterns, there is little students-students interaction, with most of them teacher-dominated. 56% of the students in Grade 3 and 70% in Grade 4 answered that there is scarcely any teacher-students and students-students interactions in the classroom. Most of the students are silent in class, being accustomed to listen to the teacher and take notes quietly. But at the same time, 79% of the students in Grade 3 and 71% in Grade 4 answered that the amount of the classroom interaction is different according to different courses.3. From interaction strategies, most of the students (82% in Grade 4 and 44% in Grade 3) believe that questioning is the most frequently used strategy for teacher and students to communicate in class. Moreover, the questioner is always the teacher. For the use of discussion, there is little, if any, the topic of the discus... |
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