On The EFL Classroom Environment In The Western China's Colleges Within Social Constructivism

Language learning environment is an important factor that affects the outcomes of learning as learning is greatly influenced by the environment in which it happens. In China almost all EFL learners are surrounded by their own native language environment and separated from that of the target language, English. As they have received the traditional English teaching mode in class for a long time, they tend to show little interest in learning English and even feel bored with it. Therefore, it is a great challenge for language teachers in China to compensate for this congenital deficiency in order to promote the English teaching effect. This research, in which we chose the non-English majors in Western China's colleges as the subjects, is dedicated to studying how to improve the English classroom learning environment in Western China. Through the analysis of the problems in current language classrooms in Western China, we tentatively proposed a social constructivist learning environment in which learners can not only learn English efficiently but also grow up as a "whole person".In this study, we first conducted an investigation to gain a panoramic picture of the current EFL classroom environment for non-English majors with a questionnaire. The subject involved three key national universities directly under the State Ministry of Education and one key university directly under the Department of Education in Sichuan Province. Totally 220 students of eight different majors participated in this investigation. We applied a quantitative approach to the analysis of the research data. The result shows that the current EFL classroom environment has been greatly improved, but there still exists many a problem, such as low efficiency of resource application, deficiency of putting the advanced theories into practice, teacher-centeredness, neglect of learners' personal growth and so on. Based on the support from constructvist theory and the reference to the result of the research, we attempted to provide some ideological advice for the construction of an optimal English learning environment. Briefly speaking, it should be physically, cognitively and psychologically optimized. For instance, physically, it should be resource enriched, well equipped and technologically supported; cognitively, it should be learning strategies trained, interaction fostered, task oriented and learner autonomy emphasized; psychologically, it should be highly motivated, emotionally supportive and personal growth fostered.In order to see how the social constructivist classroom environment can be beneficial to the English learning for the students, we conducted a teaching comparison experiment between two classes in Grade 2005 of Xihua University. One class, students majoring in E-Business, took in the project as the experimental group that was exposed to the new classroom environment, in which various learning resources were presented, interactive teaching was adopted, the cognitive development of the students was actively focused, and "whole-person" education was focused. And the other class, students majoring in Construction Engineering, participated in the experiment as the control group which received traditional teaching method, typically represented by the emphasis on the authorities of the teacher and the textbook, the adoption of knowledge-transmission approach. The result of the experiment shows that in this new kind of classroom environment the learners' affective attitudes toward English learning have been more greatly enhanced than those in the traditional classroom teaching environment.The thesis consists of six parts. Chapter One reviews the researches on EFL environment and points out some problems in the college English classroom in Western China. Chapter Two presents an overview of the theoretical rationales of social constructivism and defines the concept of learning environment. Chapter Three and Chapter four are the core of the thesis. In Chapter Three we conduct a quantitative study on the situations of the current college English classroom learning environment in Western China based on the data obtained from a questionnaire. According to the analysis, we make some suggestions in Chapter Four for improving the EFL classroom environment from physical, cognitive and psychological aspects. Chapter Five is the teaching experiment aiming at studying how the social constructivist classroom environment can be beneficial to the English learning and Chapter Six is the conclusion of the thesis.It is undeniable that the research itself is far from being perfect. Therefore, in the particular context in which English is studied as a foreign language, it is necessary for us, as well as our colleagues, to conduct further advanced and systematic researches, especially on how to apply these constructive ideas into practice to make the English learning more effective. In a word, to create a scientific and effective English learning environment in the colleges of Western China, we still have a long way to go.