Application Of Constructivism Learning Theory To Senior Middle School Classroom English Teaching

The traditional foreign language teaching overemphasizes the language knowledge. The conventional instructional design is always oriented around the teachers' explanation and students' memory of textbook language points, which lead to the students' passive participation in class and tote memory after class. That is to say, the traditional teaching mode cannot meet the needs of the reform of new curriculum. On the other hand, confronting the new curriculum, the constructivism learning theory implies some education points which focus not only on the students' mastery of language knowledge and skills but also on their abilities to become the lifelong learners. The goals of constructivism-based instructional design are to stimulate and develop students' potential abilities to learn autonomously and cooperatively, to gather information, to deal with information and to solve problems. English, as a subject for the purpose of practice, is suitable to apply the constructivism learning theory in instructional design to conduct teaching and learning. However, many researches just be done in the theoretical level, rarely in its application of specific courses.This thesis starts with the origin and development of constructivism learning theory, and then combines it with the author's teaching practice by the instructional design. This research was an empirical research in Shenzhen Buji senior middle school for about one semester, trying to explore the effects of the constructivism-based instructional design. The author took Class 13 and Class 14 of Grade 10 as the experimental subjects. Randomly class 13 was treated as the experimental group (EG) and the other as the control group (CG) for their similar English knowledge level according to their last terms' final examination scores. During the experiment, the author mainly applied three teaching modes related to the constructivism, which were scaffolding instruction, anchored instruction and random access instruction. In both groups, the questionnaire and examination were employed as the main instruments for the 16-week experiment. And data analyses were done from two angles, the vertical research and horizontal research. The purposes of vertical analysis were to gain the information about whether the students' learning competence in EG has been improved compared with their previous level in constructivism-based English class, then to know about what aspects has been improved. The purposes of horizontal research were to explore whether there exists significant difference between these two groups during the experiment and at the end of the experiment. If there were, then conclusions could be got from the obvious different aspects. The results of these analyses revealed that constructivism-based instructional design was useful and practical in senior middle school English teaching. Through the analysis of examinations scores, the author found that compared with students in CG, students in EG enhanced their achievements in examinations. Through the analysis of questionnaires, the author found that students in EG improve more obviously on the consciousness of autonomous and cooperative learning, compared with that of CG. Besides, they have more confidence in English learning.Based on the above findings, the research has implications for instructional design and English teaching in senior middle school. The results help attract teachers' attention to the application of the classroom teaching modes based on the constructivism, thus improving the level of present English education and helping students gain the abilities to become the lifelong learners.