A Study Of Intensive Reading Teaching For English Majors From The Perspective Of Constructivism

With the development of globalization, more and more talents who major inforeign language are highly needed in our country, especially English majors. Englishprofessional talents training are more and more diversified paying attention to thetheoretical，professional, and logical sense. It is a main issue in educational reformthat how to foster English major graduates with professional knowledge andcomprehensive skills.Intensive Reading is a required integrated course which plays a significant rolefor English majors. It is “intensity” that Intensive Reading teaching emphasizes. Thissubject is positioned as an important platform for the students’ comprehensivetraining of basic skills in the foundational stage. The teacher should use the text as thecenter to train students’ listening, speaking, reading, writing, translating and all kindsof basic skills. The student ought to master English phonetics, grammar, vocabulary,and other fundamental language elements. Meanwhile, attention should be paid to theorganic integration between language training and social and cultural knowledge andthe inner quality fostering. But there are some problems in Intensive Reading teachingfor English majors in college nowadays. Many teachers apply different teachingtheories in it to change the current situation. Therefore, the author of this thesisstudies the application of constructivism in it based on the former researches.Constructivism is one of the most influential schools in the educationalpsychology of the West which is rooted in Cognitive Development Theory of Piagetand Social Culture Theory of Vygotsky. Later on, by Ausubel, Bruner and manyeducation experts and psychologists’ untiring efforts, this theory gets rich anddeveloped, and gradually forms a complete system. It draws a large number of educators’ attention from all over the world and they regard it as an important theoryfor educational reform. The constructivists view that learners should be the center inthe learning process, knowledge is constructed by the students actively, situationshould be designed by the teachers and cooperation should be encouraged in learning（何克抗，2004）.At home and abroad, there are many researches on applying ConstructivistTheory in teaching practice, but on foreign language teaching, the research is less.This thesis attempts to apply Constructivism in Intensive Reading teaching forEnglish majors and tests its maneuverability and effectiveness. The experiment is toverify: whether Constructivism can be applied to the Intensive Reading course forEnglish majors? How about the effect?From the perspective of Constructivist Theory, this research firstly reviews theorigins of and three main schools of Constructivism: Jean Piaget’sCognitive-developmental Constructivism, Vygotsky’s social Constructivism, andGlasersfeld’s Radical Constructivism. It mainly concludes views of knowledge,learning and teaching which can be used to direct Intensive Reading teaching forEnglish majors.Constructivists consider that learning is a dynamic process of active construction.In the process of Intensive teaching, the learner ought to be a positive inquirer, whilethe teacher should provide all kinds of information resources, actively mobilizestudents’ subjective initiatives and stimulate their creative spirit. Don’t provideready-made knowledge, but build the situation where students inquire knowledgeindependently. The teaching mode which is guided by Constructivism is differentfrom the traditional teaching mode. It requires learners to finish the task in real andcomplex situation and creates more chances of self-management for them. Theconstructivists view that creating situation is the necessary premise of meaningconstruction, and emphasize that situation plays an important role for meaningconstruction. In their eyes, the scene which is good for learners to discover andexplore is learning situation, and learning is always associated with certain situation.In this way, the teacher should ponder over and design more appropriate learning situation. In the real situation, learners should also actively construct the meaning ofknowledge in the form of conscious cooperation and conversation with the help ofteachers and other learning partners. At the same time, learners’ original cognitivestructure can also be transformed and reconstructed.Constructivism pays attention to the key role of cooperative learning for meaningconstruction. It emphasizes that the construction of meaning is the result of the socialinteraction which happens in the conversation in the communication with others. So inthe Intensive Reading class, the social interaction between teachers and students,between students and students can not be ignored. Through the cooperation,discussion and exchange, students can see and understand things clearly in all aspects.Because everyone’s original experience is different, and the individual cognitiveability is also different, students’ explanation for the same input may not be the same.Through the cooperation and exchange with others, learners’ knowledge system willbe constructed perfectly.This is a quantitative study. The author makes a teaching experiment in ClassOne and Class Two Grade2010in English Department of Huaqiao ForeignLanguages Institute for half a year. They study the same text book. Class One iscontrolled class which is given traditional teaching methods while Class Two, theexperimental class, is given constructivist teaching methods. The instruments arecomposed of a questionnaire and two tests (TEM4(2008) and TEM4(2009)). At thebeginning of the semester, both the classes will take pre-test questionnaire and pre-test,while post-test questionnaire and pose-test at the end of the semester. The data arestatistically processed with the aid of SPSS17.0.The research findings show that the results of the experimental class who usesconstructivist teaching mode are much better than the controlled class under the samecondition. The results of questionnaire indicate most students in the experimentalclass like the constructivist teaching very much. They become more and moreinterested in the Intensive Reading learning and their initiative is mobilized. Therefore,constructivist mode is an effective way to guide Intensive Reading teaching forEnglish majors. The present study tries to explore a new angle for Intensive Reading teaching forEnglish majors from the perspective of Constructivism. But there are still someshortcomings, and more experiments and practice are needed.