The Application Of Social Constructivism In English Reading Teaching In Middle Schools

Reading is one of the important ways for people to get information, to obtain knowledge, to take pleasure and to communicate. Hence, reading draws more and more academic concerns of TEFL/TESL both at home and abroad for a long time, and great attention is being paid to the study on the models of how to teach reading. Traditional reading instruction is a teacher-based one. In class, teachers spend most of the time on the explanation of language points and vocabulary. There is little time for the students to think independently and interact with each other. The students are considered as containers of knowledge. Their activities are not activated. Their former knowledge and experience have been neglected, too. The students have no opportunities to experience the process of reading at all. So the result of the teaching of reading is not satisfying.According to the new theory on reading instruction, the process of reading is not a passive one. It is an active, complex and interactive process. During the process, readers interact with not only the writer but also the language information. Grellet insists that"reading is a constant process of guessing, and what one brings to the text is often more important than what one finds in it"(Grellet, 2001:7). The view that readers are not regarded as passive receivers but active reconstructors is similar to the theory of constructivism. Constructivism holds the view that"knowledge is not passively received but actively built up by the cognizing subject"(Glaserfeld, 1994:162). The cognizing subject actively constructs his own knowledge"by anchoring new information to preexisting knowledge"(Strommen&Lincoln, 1992). In the situated environment, learners acquire knowledge with the help of others and some necessary materials. Learning does not occur in isolation. Learners interact with others while learning. As"a theory about knowledge and learning"(Fosnot,1996:ix), constructivism emphasizes active, situated, interactive, constructed and purposeful learning.As was stated above, if we want to improve the effect of English teaching, we have to improve the scientific quality of the teaching model; the teachers should understand the concept of effective teaching and learning; they should make efforts to encourage learners to learn happily and willingly. Education is concerned not just with theories of instruction, but with learning to learn, developing skills and strategies to continue to learn, with making learning experiences meaningful and relevant to the individual, with developing and growing as a whole person. The social constructivist model affirms that four factors of teachers, students, task and context affect study process, so in the thesis I began attempting to practice the above idea in daily work. That is, I designed a new reading teaching framework which is based on the social constructivist theory. I think that it is useful for improving the effect of English teaching, and it can be helpful to the developing of the learners'learning skills and strategies.