A Study Of The Application Of Ausubel's Meaningful Reception Learning Theory To College English Teaching

American psychologist Ausubel's meaningful reception learning theory has long been widely acknowledged as one of the most important learning theories in contemporary educational psychology. From the perspective of this theory, meaningful learning leads to better long-term retention, and the primary task of classroom instruction is to enable the learners to have meaningful learning. To achieve this goal, Advance Organizer Teaching Model, the derivative of this theory, is recommended to be applied to teaching in the classroom, for advance organizers can help teachers design teaching materials, make teaching arrangement more adaptable to students' cognitive structures in order to facilitate the perception, retention, transfer and application of new knowledge and thus in turn, ensure more effective learning on the part of the students. Much research has been done concerning this theory and its teaching model. Yet it seems that it receives little attention from the circle of language teaching and research in China. Is it because the meaningful reception learning theory is not suitable to language teaching and learning or is it a treasure house long and unduly neglected by the language teaching and research circle? In order to find answers to this question, the author of this thesis first designed brand new teaching procedures guided by this theory, and then attempted to carry out two teaching experiments to test its efficacy.Research results show that Ausubel's meaningful reception learning theory can really facilitate language teaching and learning. By comparison, the facilitative effect of the Advance Organizer Teaching Model on the subjects of this research is much stronger than that of the traditional one in terms of both in-class and term-long efficacy. To be more specific, its facilitative effect on reading and writing is more notable than on vocabulary learning.These conclusions have led to some important pedagogical implications: First, as a teacher, we should make more efforts to design a good advance organizer, which intends to anchor what is to be taught to the students' previous learning and results in meaningful learning. Second, we should apply two principles to teaching in general: progressive differentiation and integrative reconciliation. In other words, each successive learning is carefully related to what has been presented before and the sequence of instruction should be built from the top down, with the most inclusive concepts, principles and propositions presented first.