Constructivism: The Theory & Its Application In Foreign Language Learning

Constructivism has the greatest influences on the practice of educaiton. Studies show that even students who score well on standardized tests often are unable to successfully integrate or contrast memorized facts and formulae with real-life applications outside the school room. One proposed solution for this problem is to prepare students to become good adaptive learners. Obviously, the traditional teacher-as-information-giver, textbook guided classroom has failed to bring about the desired outcome of producing thinking students. A much-heralded alternative is to change the focus of the classroom from teacher dominated to student-centered using a constructivist approach.In this essay, I attempt to explore constructivism as a theory and what the theory may mean for English teaching and learning. Though differnt concepts can be found about constructivism, what is shared is that taking a constructivist perspective on education is tantamount to viewing education as a means of helping people to construct their own knowledge. Two important notions orbit around the simple idea of constructed knowledge. The first is that learners construct new understandings using what they already know. The second notion is that learning is active rather than passive. The two notions mean a great change of views on knowledge, reality, teaching and learning and the roles of the teachers and students. Based on the views, a new kind of learning enviroment should be designed to adapt to it. I try to suggest a practical application of the theory by designing a constructivism-based English learning environment in which constructivism theorycan be practically applied.