Constructivism And English Teaching Through Multi-Media

In order to carry forward quality-oriented education with emphasis on students' practical ability and creational competence, we need, in the process of China's English language teaching reform, follow a guideline of an advanced educational theory characterized with human-oriented and learner-centered instruction. Constructivism, forerun by Jean Piaget, summarizes and inherits in a critical way teaching theories of different cognitive schools and forms its own philosophy of knowledge and learning. It also expounds the roles of the teacher and the student, as well as the learning environment. Rich in content, constructivism has its core in line with the purpose of quality-oriented education, and it exposes the cognitive laws of man's learning process to a satisfactory degree.Constructivist theory is deemed as a branch derived from the field of cognitive psychology which has taken the place of behaviorist psychology since 1980's and gradually occupied a dominant position in learning and teaching theories. However, constructivism did not, for a long time, exert a noticeable influence on teaching practice due to the fact that there lacked ideal conditions to create an environment in which knowledge is effectively constructed. With the rapid development of modern technology in the 1990's, multimedia and computer network provide the constructivist learning environment with an ideal cognitive tool to process and effective media to obtain information. The theory of constructivism, on the other hand, provides a theoretical basis for carrying out learner-centered teaching mode through multimedia and computer network. Therefore it is now both necessary and possible for us to push forward the reform of English teaching with advanced learning and teaching theories as its guiding principles and multimedia and computer network as its useful tools for computer-assisted instruction.Computer-assisted instruction, with its multimedia technology, featuring new way of expressions both static and dynamic including texts, graphics and images, audio, animations and movies, has led the classroom teaching into a new state. It has displayed the advantages that traditional pedagogies have no way to compare, and now become...