The Implications Of Social Constructivism For Oral English Teaching To English Major

Social Constructivism has just been proposed by English Psychologists, Williams and Burden, from a pedagogical perspective who synthesize the ideas of both Vygotsky and another psychologist, Feuerstein, and advance that it is the students who construct language knowledge, and that the process of constructing knowledge could arise from social conversational interaction which might produce cognitive as well as affective environments. Therefore, it is far more suitable for both learners and teachers in the concrete EFL teaching-learning process. They have postulated that four key sets of factors– teacher, learners, tasks and context– influence the learning process. None of these factors exists in isolation.It is well known that the teaching of oral English has been a weak aspect of our English foreign language teaching, not only for the non-English but also for the English major. In spite of strong desire and motivation, the English major students can not improve their oral English level as expected. In order to find out whether the social constructivist teaching-learning process is effective and helpful in oral English teaching, a research is conducted among a group of English major students of Changchun University of Science and Technology. According to the research, we are fully aware how social constructivist perspective can, on every aspect, promote oral English learning of the experimental group. Therefore, establishing social constructivist teaching-learning concept is the first implication. The research also implicates the requirements for the teacher, especially for an English teacher in oral language teaching. Cultivating autonomous learning is no doubt crucial. Helpful activities and positive environment are indispensable and important.The four parts are closely related. No matter how diligent the teachers are,...