Si Honghai, Department of Teaching and Research, Zibo City, Shandong Province
Only by strengthening the research of teaching theory and learning theory and guiding teaching with scientific theory can the efficiency of oral English teaching be improved. Constructivism theory emphasizes the initiative, sociality and situational nature of learning. The flexibility theory of constructivism and its random access teaching, situational teaching and scaffolding teaching theory are of reference significance to oral English teaching.
Keywords: constructivism theory; Oral English teaching
China Library Classification Number: G623.3 1 Document Identification Number: A Document Number:1009-2536 (2005) 04-0008-03.
The poor oral English ability of China students is a realistic problem that every English educator must face. The only way to solve this problem is to reform the traditional oral English teaching mode, improve the level of oral English teaching and enhance the effectiveness of oral English teaching. In order to do this, it is not enough to work hard, because force is a vector, not only large, but also directional. Only by using scientific theories to guide oral English teaching and solve the problem of "dumb English" will it become empty talk, which is why the author tries to integrate constructivism theory into oral English teaching.
First, the existing oral English teaching mode of reflection
Some people think that the poor oral English ability of many students is caused by the traditional English teaching that overemphasizes the teaching of language knowledge and reading and writing skills. Therefore, various questions have been raised about English syllabus at all levels and English teachers' teaching ability and language literacy. So, what is the problem?
First of all, we can't simply blame the objective environment of oral English teaching and learning. Although the economic factors of China's entry into WTO have objectively increased people's attention to spoken English, it is still unrealistic to get opportunities to learn spoken English in English-speaking countries or to hire a large number of foreign teachers. Secondly, we can't expect the reform of English syllabus and teaching materials to directly change the passive situation of oral English teaching, because even with the best recipes, vegetables and seasonings, it is impossible to make high-quality delicious food without the chef's mastery of cooking and other technological skills.
Therefore, the author thinks that only by strengthening teachers' study of teaching theory and learning theory, guiding oral English teaching with scientific theory and guiding students' oral English learning and training can the efficiency of oral English teaching be improved as soon as possible.
Second, the introduction of constructivism into oral English teaching reasons
(A) the historical origin of constructivism theory.
The earliest supporters of constructivism can be traced back to Piaget, Switzerland. As the most influential psychologist in the field of cognitive development, Piaget founded the Geneva School of Children's Cognitive Development. Pi's theory studies children's cognitive development from the viewpoint of the interaction between internal and external causes of materialist dialectics. He believes that children gradually construct knowledge about the outside world in the process of interacting with the surrounding environment, thus developing their own cognitive structure (Zhang Jianwei and Chen Qi, 1996). On the one hand, children absorb relevant information from the external environment through assimilation, and combine it with their existing cognitive structure to integrate the information provided by external stimuli into their original cognitive structure; On the other hand, the influence of external stimuli changes the original cognitive structure through adaptation. Its cognitive structure is gradually constructed in the process of assimilation and adaptation, and is constantly enriched, perfected and developed in the cycle of "balance-imbalance-new balance". This is Piaget's basic view on constructivism.
At the end of 1970s, American educational psychologists headed by J.S. Bruner introduced L.S. Vygotsky's theory of cultural and historical development of the former Soviet Union into the United States, which greatly promoted the development of constructivism (,Liu Rude, 1997). Vickers believes that the advanced psychological function comes from the internalization of external actions, and the internalized intellectual actions are also externalized into practical actions, which makes the subjective see that the bridge between objectiveness, internalization and externalization is human activities. Today's constructionists are very concerned about how to construct knowledge based on original experience, psychological structure and beliefs. They emphasize the initiative, sociality and situation of learning, and put forward many new opinions on learning and teaching. These should be said to benefit from the wide spread of Vygotsky's thought in the 1980s. Therefore, at present, "there is a revolution in educational psychology, and people call it constructivism learning theory with different names" (Slaven, 1994, quoted from Zhang Jianwei and Chen Qi, 1996).
(B) the feasibility of using constructivism theory to guide oral English teaching
Based on the basic understanding of learning, constructivism puts forward its own views on the selection and organization of learning content and the overall design of teaching process, namely, cognitive elasticity theory and its random access teaching, top-down teaching design and network concept of knowledge structure, situational teaching and scaffolding teaching. The author analyzes some viewpoints that can be used for reference in oral English teaching:
1. Cognitive flexibility theory and random access teaching advocate, on the one hand, to provide learners with the foundation they need to construct their understanding, and at the same time, to leave them with broad construction space so that they can adopt appropriate strategies for specific situations (Spiro et al., 199 1, quoted from Zhang Jianwei.
The usual practice of oral English teaching is to take the teaching materials of conversation class as the teaching content, first analyze and understand the materials, then practice pronunciation and grammar, follow-up, recite, and then generally simulate the practice of looking at pictures and speaking. This is a teaching process from mastering language forms to using language to express ideas. Many people have come this way, but more people have not reached the level of mastering spoken English and speaking English fluently in this way. It should be said that this practice is a "reuse" teaching model. Because it is only a simple transition from memory to reuse, it is not necessarily related to rational and conscious thinking activities, so it is difficult to blurt it out flexibly. According to the theory of cognitive flexibility and the idea of random access teaching, we find that while providing students with reusable training of language forms, we should also create conditions, leave them enough construction space, connect with specific situations more, and let students pay more attention to the context and language information implied by language forms while imitating and memorizing.
2. Situational or anchored teaching advocated by constructivism emphasizes that teachers show the exploration process similar to that of experts in reality in classroom teaching, providing prototypes for solving practical problems and guiding students to explore; Emphasis is placed on simulating real tasks to make students understand the problems they want to solve, to stimulate students' internal motivation to learn with holistic, complex and challenging tasks, and to cultivate students' ability to solve problems.
Obviously, simulated situational teaching is a teaching concept that should be worked hard in oral English teaching. The demonstration of simulated exploration process or prototype problem solving process is a popular oral English teaching mode at present. As long as we look at the dazzling array of audio-visual oral textbooks on the shelves of foreign language bookstores, we can feel that the era when people rely solely on oral textbooks is gone forever. Situational teaching theory has important practical significance for us to change our view of learning and teaching. Because of this, how to boldly choose teaching materials and how to boldly absorb oral course resources from various information media has become a problem that we must face up to and think about at present.
3. The scaffolding instruction theory of constructivism aims at the respective roles of teachers and students in the process of teaching and learning: teachers guide teaching, assist students to master, construct and internalize the knowledge and skills they have learned, and enable students to carry out higher-level cognitive activities (Slaven, 1994, quoted from Zhang Jianwei and Chen Qi, 1994). In other words, the task of management learning is gradually transferred from the teacher to the students themselves through scaffolding (the help of the teacher), and finally the scaffolding is removed.
Specific to oral English teaching, teachers' guidance and auxiliary role is also very important. Stephen Krashen's Input Hypothesis holds that adult language acquisition needs to be exposed to comprehensible language input as much as possible in the classroom (Mason, 1999). Although there are many doubts about Krashen's theory, we can't deny the existence of language sense in English learning and the important role of a lot of input in the formation of language sense. Therefore, the author still tends to say that in adult foreign language learning, acquisition and learning coexist. Thinking of the question of how to choose traditional teaching method and communicative teaching method in English teaching in China, the author thinks that we should combine them organically according to the principle of harmony but difference. In oral English classroom teaching, what teachers must do is to make students understand the language input, and then ensure that students enter the i+ 1 stage (Mason, 1999) from the I stage (the learner's ability level), that is, the stage of acquisition in a natural order. How to grasp the scale of "comprehensibility" is very critical, and it is very necessary for teachers to play their "auxiliary" role.
Third, the constructivist theory under the guidance of oral English teaching
(A) to activate students' positive attitude towards oral English learning
Many foreign teachers who come to China to teach oral English have a common feeling, that is, the shyness of many China students is the first obstacle that teachers and students need to break through together. It should be said that most students still hope to speak English fluently. Whether for exams or for applications, the motivation to learn spoken English is beyond doubt. So how to activate students' potential positive attitude? We might as well design teaching tasks suitable for students' level in the preparation stage to dispel their fear of making mistakes; At the same time, situational teaching design scheme is adopted. First, using multimedia-assisted teaching methods to present certain audio-visual conversation materials, and when necessary, point out key sentence patterns, phrases and vocabulary for students to imitate and apply. Then choose a topic according to a similar pattern, such as "My favorite ……", which is about personal hobbies. Students answer according to their hobbies, refer to the relevant information provided by the teacher in advance, express their thoughts and feelings in the target language, experience the joy of success, and make themselves gradually.
(2) memorize commonly used idioms and sentence patterns, turn waste into treasure and use them flexibly.
Some idioms and sentence patterns in English should be memorized and used at the beginning of learning, and grammatical relations can be ignored for the time being. As beginners have not mastered spoken English, they should remember these idioms and sentence patterns in order to carry out preliminary communication activities. Being able to say hello and say something in a limited range is something beginners often have, not just because of enthusiastic reuse behavior. If we want to help them maintain their enthusiasm for reuse, we must guide them to strengthen their acquisition training, otherwise they will gradually find it difficult to express their thoughts and feelings freely. At this time, teachers should use traditional teaching methods as scaffolding to guide students to consciously start from warm-up and enter the task-driven problem situation designed by teachers. Then, guide students to set goals, or expand divergent vocabulary, or imagine the interaction between related scenes, characters and possible characters, so as to broaden students' thinking and make them focus on the problem itself rather than the language. In fact, when students no longer regard language as the obvious goal or the only goal of learning activities, we can say that oral English teaching is no longer for teaching, but for use and for flexible use.
Of course, the essence of constructivism requires that we should not ignore the learner's main role in the teaching process when we are engaged in oral English teaching. The relationship between teachers and students is not the subject-object relationship, but the subject relationship, which is a dual subject relationship. As Krashen advocates: on the one hand, students' unconscious language acquisition produces fluent words, on the other hand, teachers' guidance enables students to monitor language output with rational and conscious language learning to ensure the correctness of language output. As for whether it is too late to consciously monitor oral English expression, the author thinks that the solution to the problem can only rely on higher-level re-acquisition and re-monitoring, and the cycle between them is not ups and downs but spirals up.
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