Classroom Interaction For Constructivist English Learning In Primary Schools:a Case Study

The core contents of constructivism are student-centered, emphasizing students’ active exploration and knowledge finding to actively construct knowledge on their own. The constructivist methods would potentially increase students’ interests in English learning. Setting the objectives and creating authentic situations can reinforce students’ consciousness of goal oriented study and stimulate students’ cognition. Once the instructor sets forth the particular goals for learning, the students know better about the contents they are expected to learn. Bearing the goals in mind, the students are objective-oriented so as to improve students’ interest of learning English. Once the students operate cooperatively, each and every member of the group is held accountable to the team work.For a lengthy period of time, classroom English teaching tends to be teacher-centered, featured with static and boring teaching activities. In this type of education model, the contents are rigid and inflexible and therefore unable to mobilize the students’initiative and attention. Consequently, students’spoken English cannot be properly developed. To allow the students to get accurate, fluent and correct cross-cultural communication, the teachers should make use of interactive teaching in English.This thesis explores the various aspects of primary school English teaching in the context of the constructivist theory. The result of an empirical research shows that the constructivist theory can significantly improve students’academic performance in English language learning.The experiment involves a controlled class and an experimental class by recording the students’ classroom performance, the interview and the questionnaires. After applying the constructivist theory to the experimental class, the scores of the two classes are compared. The result shows that the scores of the experimental class are better than the controlled class. The conclusion is that the constructivist teaching methods are more effective than the traditional teaching methods.The conventional English teaching methods lay more emphasis on English knowledge rather than language competence, on grammar as opposed to communication, as well as on writing. It is therefore quite difficult to foster the students’enthusiasm, initiative and creativity. The interactive English teaching emphasizes application rather than memory. And this new teaching mode advocates demonstration rather than monotonous grammar or vocabulary exercise. In classes, teachers organize activities or tasks rather than assign dull homework, and underline communication rather than instruction. Compared with the conventional English teaching, the interactive English teaching has a lot of advantages. The students would take more interests in English classroom activities under the constructivist learning environment, and the constructivist learning atmosphere is considerable in enhancing students’ English test performance.The thesis concludes that the students’academic achievements in the English are improved through interactive language teaching methods. Due to the limited time and labor, there are still some other irrelevant problems. The teaching mode is a new one because more attention is paid to students’ active involvement.The results show that the students’ interests in the involvement of classroom activities increase via the construction of a constructivist learning environment. Second language acquisition theory generally regards learning interests as a component of motivation, a crucial individual factor in language acquisition. The enhancement of a learner’s interests in the involvement of classroom activities could lead to the enhancement and optimization of the attitude and motivation.