A Social Constructivist Model Of Senior High School English Extensive-reading Teaching

Social constructivism is a learning-and-teaching theory that emphasizes the collaborative nature of human learning in social contexts and the key role that social interaction plays in knowledge construction. Social constructivism argues that four key factors—teacher, learners, tasks and context—influence the teaching-learning process and none of these factors exists in isolation.In the recent decade, social constructivism has been widely used in EFL teaching, especially since Williams and Burden put forward the social constructivist model for foreign language teaching. In many previous studies, the social constructivist theory was used to guide EFL teaching and great achievements were achieved( Wang Yan, 2006; Deng Qingling & others, 2004; Cheng Yingli, 2004; Doorlittle, 1999; Tappan, 1998; Greenwood & others, 1988; Smith, 1986; Greenwood, 1989……). For example, under the direction of the social constructive model provided by Williams and Burden, Chen Yingli (2004) designed a story-based EFL program for a primary school teacher to implement in her class in the south of Taiwan. The results showed that the experiment reached what was expected. Again, Wang Yan (2006) also drew on the social constructive model founded by Williams and Burden to reform her teaching of Commercial English. Wang has achieved far better results since the reform of teaching models under the direction of the social constructivist approach. Enlightened by these studies, the author applied the social constructivist theory to English extensive-reading teaching in his senior high school, which is of great significance both in theory and in practice. First, in terms of theory, although the social constructivist model proposed by Williams and Burden has been widely applied in EFL teaching, it is not adequate for teaching English extensive reading, because it is a little too general. Besides, the New English Curriculum Criteria state that the global goal of the fundamental educational phase is to develop the students'comprehensive abilities, of which reading competence is the core, and thus, the development of students'reading competence is the central part of the English teaching in senior high schools. Extensive reading is an effective way to improve students'reading, but so far, there has been no existing model to teach English extensive reading in senior high schools; therefore, it is necessary and practical to study and find an approach to teaching English extensive reading in senior high schools.The present study was made as described below: First, based on the social constructivist theory and some previous social constructivist studies in EFL teaching, the researcher proposed a social constructivist model of English extensive-reading teaching. Then, the researcher implemented an experiment on two groups of subjects in Grade One in his senior high school for a semester. In the experiment, one group acted as the experimental group, who was taught twice a week in the social constructivist model of teaching English extensive reading, and the other as the control group, who was taught by the traditional method. The pre-tests and post-tests were used in the experiment and the results of them were tested through the independent samples test. The independent samples T-test of the results of the pre-tests(two tailed, P>0.05) showed that the two groups were parallel in reading competence while the independent samples T-test of the results of the post-tests(two tailed, P<0.05) revealed that the experimental group achieved significantly more improvement in reading competence than the control group. By analyzing the data, the author drew a conclusion: the social constructivist model of English extensive-reading teaching contributes more to the students'reading competence than the traditional teaching; it can be used to implement English extensive reading teaching.