A Study Of Foreign Language Instruction In Middle School Classrooms: From A Socio-constructivist Perspective

Socio-constructivism drawn upon the work of Lev Vygotsky, has been a leading theory in the field of education in last twenty years and an influencing theoretical guide on research and practice of the modern education sector. Vygotsky pointed out that learning of individual is achieved under a certain socio-cultural background. His most important theoretical concepts are the concept of zone of proximal development (ZPD) and the theory of scaffolding, and he holds that only by being provided enough and proper scaffolding within ones'zone of proximal development, a learner can achieve the mastery of the knowledge.From the year 2001, the leading ideology of English teaching all over the nation, English Curriculum Standards for Nine-Year Compulsory Education on Full-time Junior Secondary Schools, which was designed under the guidance of socio-constructivism, was published and also marked the beginning of a new round of educational innovation. Years past, researches showed that a lot of achievements had been fulfilled in the process of the innovation, which, at the same time, was also welcomed and appreciated by students, teachers and all education participants. But how are the standards and the teaching innovation executed in middle school classroom instruction, to be specifically, how teachers arrange their daily classroom teaching, which is still a question which is not answered by quantitative empirical study yet worth great contribution to research. This work would certainly provide us a thorough and intensive understanding of classroom teaching in different types of schools.Under the theoretical guidance of Vygotsky's socio-constructivism, on the basis of a review of previous classroom studies, with the research tool of the Pedagogy Coding Scheme (nenu-2008-001) and Transcriber Version 1.04, designed by the research group of the national social science key research program"Systematic Research of Multiple Factors Influencing the Quantity of Middle School English Teaching", (Liu, Wang, & Lin,2009), the author observe and record English classes of seven teachers, who were from three different types of middle schools of northeast China, in this study, more than 1,300 minutes of classroom instruction were coded and transcribed. After the collection and collation of all data, the author offered an comprehensive description of the current situation of classroom instruction in northeast China in terms of type of talk, focus of instruction, and type of knowledge; and what's more, she also compare and illustrate the similarity and differences between rural middle schools and urban middle schools, general urban middle schools and key urban middle schools.On the whole, English teachers of northeast china arrange their class in a similar way in each and every category involved in the study. Curriculum related talk accounts for most of class time with a proportion of 62.29% which shows that teachers valued their class time very much and devoted most of it into the instruction of curriculum task. This also can be seen in the result of the second category on focus of instruction, 74.19% of total class time is spent on the instruction of language form, which show that teachers place comparatively more stress on basic knowledge and thus pay less attention to the instruction of practical knowledge and skills. The result is similar in the third category on types of knowledge. 75.8% of class time is occupied by activities concern basic knowledge, thus reveal a shortage of knowledge base on linguistic, which would result in a poor accomplishment of their students.In the comparison of classes given by rural and urban middle school teachers the author find that teachers of urban middle schools emphasize more on curriculum task, and their use of procedural talk provides necessary scaffolding for students. While teachers rural middle schools use more regulatory talk to keep class in order. At the same time, overmuch procedural talk is used in rural middle schools than in urban ones. Teachers from rural middle schools focus more on language form (74.24%) than teachers from urban middle schools (74.01%) which reveal that the mastery of vocabulary, grammar rules and language points are more demanding in rural middle schools. Teachers from both types of classes spend comparatively less time talking about one's understanding of the text in constructing of language function which reflects that translating teaching approach is still of great influence in middle school English classes.The author also finds that,relatively speaking, teachers of general middle schools devote more percentage of class time on the curriculum-related talk and regulatory while giving less procedural talk than teachers of key middle schools. It can be figured out that with less concentration on curriculum task, teachers from key middle schools emphasis less classroom discipline yet give more scaffolding to their students. Teachers of both groups focus mainly on language form while teachers from key middle schools emphasis more on language function thus achieve a better job in cultivating students'comprehensive capability. Teachers from both types of schools devote most of their instructional time on basic knowledge and comparatively more attention (18.26%) was paid to process knowledge by teachers from key middle schools than teachers from general middle schools (15.07%). With more instruction on process knowledge, students of key middle schools would achieve a better comprehensive capability.