An Investigation Into English Teachers' Mediation Role In Senior High School

Taking Vygotsky's theory of "zone of proximal development” as the guide and Fuerstein's mediation theory as well as twelve mediation features as the development,modern English teaching attaches more importance on teachers' mediation role.On the basis of these,there appear a lot of studies about mediation role,but most of which take the university undergraduates and higher vocational college students as the research subject.Based on the constructivism,humanism and social interaction theory,the purpose of this study is to investigate English teachers and students' perceptions about teachers' mediation role in senior high school.By means of dividing high school students into liberal arts students and science students,we can find out different perceptions on teachers' mediation role between liberal arts students and science students.This study takes 123 high school students and 50 English teachers from one middle school of key construction of Nanchang City,Jiangxi Province as the research subject,respectively using the research methods of questionnaire survey,interview and classroom observation.This thesis is expected to discuss the following three questions: Firstly,what are teachers and students' perceptions about English teachers' mediation role in senior high school? Is there any difference between teachers and students' views? Secondly,is there any difference on perceptions of English teachers' mediation role between liberal arts students and science students? What's the enlightenment for teachers? Finally,what are students' evaluations on the mediation role that English teachers actually played in the classroom? Is there any difference between students' evaluation and teachers' views? The questionnaire of teachers' mediation role makes reference to Williams and Burden(2000)'s questionnaire,using the statistical software SPSS17.0 to collect data and do the following analysis: First,the descriptive statistics are employed to analyze high school English teachers and students' perceptions of English teachers' mediation role and students' evaluation on English teachers' practice of the mediation role;Second,the independent sample t test is used to discuss whether there is significant difference between English teachers and students' views,to analyze if there is significant difference between liberal arts students and science students' perceptions of teachers' mediation role and to explorewhether there is significant difference between teachers' perceptions and students' evaluations on teachers' practice.Finally I arrive at the following conclusions:First,the English teachers and students of local high school have realized the importance of teachers' mediation role.In the twelve mediation roles,teachers and students think "developing confidence in learning","teaching effective learning strategies",and "clear instructions" are the most important.However,there exist significant differences between teachers' and students' views on "clear and instructions" "the significance of the task","cultivating learning confidence","cooperative learning" and "a sense of belonging".Next,students' evaluation on English teachers' mediation role in the actual classroom teaching is a little high,but there is a big gap between English teachers' views and their practical actions.In twelve mediation roles,in addition to “the significance of the task ",“the purpose beyond the here and now" and "cooperative learning",there are significant differences of the rest nine mediation roles.Finally,there exists big difference between liberal arts students and science students' perceptions of teacher's mediation role.Except for “the significance of the task”,there are significant differences between liberal arts students and science students' perceptions on the rest of the eleven mediation roles.This study has a certain guiding significance to high school English teaching.According to the results of the study,some suggestions for English teachers to implement the mediation role have been proposed.