Making Full Use Of Textbooks To Improve Students' Self-construction In English Learning

Constructivism was first advanced by psychologist Piaget in the 1960s. It sprang up in the 1990s and now is well developed across the world. Constructivism holds that knowledge is not passively received but built up by the students and learning is an active construction based on the prior knowledge.It is advocated in the new English curriculum standards that students should be the center of attention in the class and acquire systematic knowledge and language abilities through cooperation while teachers should focus on the development of students' all-round language abilities with the help of advanced teaching methods rather than traditional teacher-centered model. Obviously, the basis of the standard talked above is constructivism. Constructivism, which studies education based on the researches into students instead of traditional teaching theories or methods, can help teachers solve contradictions and some other practical problems in our language teaching, releasing teachers from the fetter of traditional ideas and teaching methods, assisting to build up a new outlook on education and teaching mode for us teachers. This article explores the practical application of the theory of constructivism in 'Advance with English' in secondary schools in Jiangsu Province.The first chapter of this paper mainly clarifies the gap between the new English curriculum standards and the reality of English language teaching, showing that most teachers are puzzled about how to improve the quality of their teaching and how to increase students' interest in language learning. I go on to analyze the study on the theory of constructivism and teaching methods guided by the theory at home and abroad, then I raise the question whether the theory can be used to direct the teaching of 'Advance with English'. In the second chapter, the theoretical foundation, the main ideas of constructivism and teaching models developed on the basis of constructivism is introduced. In chapter three, I try to find out if we teachers should use constructivism to guide our English teaching in the book of 'Advance with English' by doing an experiment in myclasses. First a systematic analysis of 'Advance with English' is given with an example of teaching plans in Unit two, Module three, then a realistic experimental study on the application of the theory in my classes is described. Finally, the result of the study is given that the designing of the textbook 'Advance with English' we use now meets the requirement of the constructivism theory, and teachers can and should apply the theory and teaching methods to the teaching practice. But during the process of the experiment we still find some problems while using the constructivism theory and its methods, for example, the long-term learning habits of the students are hard to change; the update of teaching facilities, monitoring students' activities, realistic cooperative learning activities and the improvement of teachers' own knowledge and abilities and so on are all necessary. In Chapter four, I go on to give some suggestions that though constructivism theory promotes the teaching of 'Advance with English' greatly, there still exist some problems for further research; so the instructors should consider constructivism dialectically and assimilate its reasonable views so as to form some teaching methods that suit the English teaching practice in our country.