A Research On The Constructivism-based Model For Teaching College English To Art Major Students

With the economic globalization, more and more art talents communicate with thewestern people. Besides, the development and thriving of Chinese art and culture cannotbe separated from high-quality talented persons with both art knowledge and Englishskills who are called inter-disciplinary talents. Therefore, with the increasing artexchange, more and more universities have set up art majors, and some have even set upthe art college. College English for art majors has been set up simultaneously andamong the courses, English has attracted the most attention. As we all know, it is notusually absolutely perfect for the newly-born things at the beginning. Art English, as anew inter-discipline, has such problems as curriculum setting, teaching materialproduction as well as teaching methods. The latest teaching theory of westerneducational psychology—the constructivism, with many unique opinions both inteaching and learning, has posed a challenge to the traditional teaching theory.Therefore, this paper will study how to teach English to art students from theperspective of constructivism, trying to improve their English proficiency.In order to get the access to the first-hand information, the author has conducted aquestionnaire survey and an interview with English teachers as well as the classroomobservation. According to the results of the survey and the relevant existing literature,the author found that English teaching for the art major students in the curriculum is toosimple. The listening class and speaking class are separated to private lessons, even thewriting and translation class are ignored. Meanwhile, these art majors are using thetextbooks which are for general non-English majors. The textbook cannot meet the artstudents in terms of these students’ English proficiency and their major particularity. Inteaching methods, teacher-centered mode sets obstacles in teaching English withpractical teaching idea. These teaching methods do not provide art-related activities forthe art majors and accordingly these students cannot show interest in class. The authorcompares the differences between constructivism teaching theory and traditionalteaching theory and continuously combines the results of the survey to further analyzeand summarize the suggestions for teaching reformation of English course to art majors.For example, in the curriculum, we can set listening-speaking course and writing as wellas translation course with the ratio of4:2:2in the comprehensive English course inorder to satisfy the students and meet the society; As for the textbook, we can choose the proper textbook which is about intercultural knowledge and which also meets thesestudents’ basic English proficiency in order to strengthen the students’ competence andinterest; In the view of constructivism, it is better for these art students to learn from theprocess by adopting the situational teaching method, project-based method and thecommunicative method. These methods provide a better and art-related environment forthese art majors which is helpful for them to construct their own English proficiency bythemselves.