Constructivism And Its Application In English Teaching

Constructivism proposes that humans cannot be "given" information, which they immediately understand and use. Instead, humans must "construct" their own knowledge. They build their own knowledge by testing ideas and approaches based on their prior knowledge and experience, which enable them to create mental schemas in their heads, applying this to a new situation, and integrating the new knowledge gained with pre-existing concept. Constructivism in the educational area is more concerned with understanding achieved through experience than with facts received from others.However, for a long time teachers seem to focus only on how well students absorb the ideas spoken by teachers through endless, repeated rote practice and how fast they might recall facts for a test rather than on how students are constructing and reasoning, and can provide no guarantee that students will spontaneously use it later. Constructivist view of learning is that students try to learn and master the essence of the knowledge on their own initiative in student-centered environment, including a series of authentic and meaningful activities created by teacher, such as information collection, pair or group cooperation, discussion, role play, investigation etc. What's more, students learn to know how to use what they have studied to solve relevant problems in real world. Students are the active constructors of knowledge in developmental learning, while teacher is a monitor, organizer, helper and facilitator.This paper has outlined educational psychology by presenting some major schools of thought, which suggest some ways to integrate classroom teaching with constructivism, whose theory dominates foreign language teaching, so it is necessary to consider carefully how the use of this new technique improves classroom teaching in education programs.