A Constructivist Approach To Reading Instruction In High School

In English as a foreign language teaching, reading comprehension is one of the most important factors in assessing a learner's linguistic competence. Guided by the traditional approach which is based on the Behaviorism to language teaching, the teacher controls everything and explains everything. The student's role as the center of learning has been neglected and students have still been passive readers. This approach breaks the law of learning, which causes reading instruction to be "a waste of time and poor teaching result". How to change passive teaching approach to active teaching approach? The traditional approach needs reforming, which calls for constructivism.According to Constructivism, reading is a cognitive process in which readers are required to tap into prior knowledge, interact with the author and the text, negotiate with other readers and finally construct meanings. Constructing meanings is the goal of reading comprehension. After exploring the process of reading and constructivism, we find out the process of constructing meaning, in fact, means the dynamic process of learning and the points of view of Constructivist approach to reading instruction follow the law of language teaching. Therefore, the author believes that applying the constructivism to reading instruction will change traditional approach to reading instruction, improve our reading instruction and contribute to current reading reform.This paper, which employs such research methods as experimental, inductive methods and case studies and so on, attempts to explore how to apply constructivism to the teaching of reading so as to change the passive readers to active ones and change the traditional approach to constructivist approach and improve reading instruction. The introduction briefly reviews the present situation in reading instruction research and the need for the study. Chapter One explores the nature of reading and reading process. Chapter One and Chapter Two are balanced structures in this paper. Chapter Two presents main concepts about constructivism and implication for reading instruction. Chapter Three states the reasons for application of constructivism to reading instruction together with some practical suggestions. So, in this chapter, we combine the Chapter One with Chapter Two in theory. In order to combine constructivism with practice, Chapter 4 presents a case from classroom teaching and an experiment conducted during the author's teaching practice. The results from the experiment show that reading instruction guided by constructivism can bring about many advantages which are quite beyond the traditional teaching and have been improved effectively. Chapter 5 presents the encouraging result and some suggestions for further study. This thesis is expected to be a contribution to current New English Curriculum and Teaching Method Reform.