The Implication of Constructivist Learning Theory toEnglish Reading Teaching fo

Abstract:Through the review of Constructivist Learning Theory, this paper discuss the implication of Constructivist Learning Theory to English reading teaching for non-English undergraduates. The paper concludes with suggestions on the effective reading teaching process. They are:1) Set suitable reading tasks，2) Activate students’ schema，3) Focus on meaning-oriented learning，4) encourage students to construct their personal interpretation.

Key words:Constructivist Learning Theory English Reading Teaching non-English undergraduates

1.Introduction

In the traditional English reading teaching, the teacher usually guides the students through a text carefully, explaining new words and phrases, analyzing the grammatical structures in detail, translating sentences and parts of the text if necessary, always making sure that the students understand each sentence in the text. The traditional approach pays too much attention to the teaching while neglects the students' positive understanding of the texts, thus cause some defects of the students in reading.The Constructivist Learning Theory (CLT) stresses the positive meaning construction of the learners. This paper focuses on the implication of constructivist learning theory to college English reading teaching for non-English undergraduates.

2. Constructivist Learning Theory

Constructivist learning theory holds the view that learning is not passive acceptance of knowledge but an active process in which learners construct their own meaning by anchoring new information to preexisting knowledge .

Constructivism originates form the theoretic views of several psychologists such as Piaget's cognitive development theory, Vygotsky's theory of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) and some others'. Since it appeared in late 1970's, constructivism has been enjoying more and more prevalence in western countries and has brought about a revolution to learning theories. The following are the ideas of some important representatives of constructivism.

Piaget (1972) holds the view that individual constructs knowledge about the external world gradually via interaction with his or her environment, resulting in the development of cognitive structure. Two basic processes are involved in the interaction between the individual and his or her environment, namely: assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation refers to the process of taking in the new information and combining it with the existing cognitive structure while accommodation refers to the process of the transformation and reconstruction of the original cognitive structure when the new message can't be incorporated into its existing knowledge system. The individual's cognitive ability is developed through the two processes of assimilation and accommodation.

Different from Piaget's views which hold that knowledge is gained by the interaction between the individual and his/her physical environment, Vygotsky's emphasizes the interaction between the individual and the society and culture in which he/she lives. Vygotsky's most famous theory is his Zone of Proximal Development. His definition of ZPD is "the distance between the actual development as determined by problem solving underguidance or in collaboration with peers" (Vygotsky, 1978). Thus Vygotsky's theory claims that an individual's psychological growth and language development are interrelated with the interactions with others.

Bruner (1990) points out that learning should be regarded as a process of new information gathering and knowledge processing. Learning is an active process in which learners construct new ideas based upon their current and past knowledge. Bruner's most important contribution is his proposal of the concept of Discovery Learning. Discovery Learning is defined as "an approach to instruction through which students interact with their environment-by exploring and manipulating objects, wrestling with questions and controversies, or performing experiments". The underlying assumption is that students are more likely to remember concepts they discover by themselves.

Kelly (1963) puts forward the notion of "personal construction". He has emphasized that each individual has different personal constructs about the objective world owing to their different cognitive preference and current knowledge level. To Kelly, the learner is actively involved in constructing his or her own personal understanding of the new information, resulting in different interpretation of the same thing.

3. Implication for English reading teaching for Non-English undergraduates

Constructivist learning theory emphasizes: 1) the learner's development of active meaning construction, 2) the actual application of the learnt knowledge in practice, 3) the interaction and cooperation between the learner and his/her environment. The constructivist learning theory provides useful insights for English reading teaching for Non-English undergraduates.

3.1 Set suitable tasks

According to Vygotsky's theory of ZPD, he holds that there exist two levels of cognitive development: One is children's current developing level, and the other is the potential developing level, which is available under certain conditions. It suggests that teachers should set suitable tasks for students. In the teaching of reading, for example, when teachers design the reading materials, they should supply their students with suitable reading materials. The reading materials should neither be so far beyond the learner's reach nor so close to their current level. The non-English undergraduates' level of proficiency generally belongs to intermediate level, compared with vocational students and undergraduate English majors in the college. When we design English reading teaching materials, we should fully understand the current level of the non-English undergraduates. Therefore we can choose appropriate reading materials on purpose and use them according to the teaching steps. If the materials are too easy, the students will not be challenged; And if they are too difficult, the students will feel tough. Only the tasks are suitable for the students can they be able to learn most effectively.

3.2 Activate students' schema

With the enlightenment of constructivist learning theory, teachers should provide the background information to activate learners' schema.Before reading, teacher should make sure if students have the background knowledge relative to the text. As the background knowledge can be very helpful for interpreting the text. In order to activate the students' previously acquired knowledge, teacher may use some pictures provided by the textbook, or intentionally prepare some other materials relative to the text. For example a text entitled An Unusual Job in Active English , it is about how a woman becomes a stuntperson and how she feels about it. In teaching this reading text, I first make the students look at the pictures at the top of the text, raise the following questions for students to answer.

T: What is the person doing in the pictures?

S:

T: What are the tasks and duties of professional stuntperson? Where do you get this impression?

S:

T: What do you think of being a stuntperson? Why?

S:

The first few questions aim at arousing student interest and building a connection between their own experience and the reading material. Some relevant knowledge stored in their memory is triggered. According to the CLT, it is essential that the students' background knowledge is activated to the greatest possible degree so that they can be psychologically prepared to the reading tasks they are going to undertake.

3.3 Focus on meaning-oriented learning

Constructivist learning theory provides teachers with a guiding principle, that is the result of learning is gained "by the way of active meaning construction" . CLT is a great challenge to the traditional teaching methodology which emphasizes rule and rote learning. In the traditional reading class, the teachers usually guide students through a text carefully, explaining new word and phrases, analyzing the grammatical structures in detail, always making sure that the students understand each sentence in the text. These traditional teaching methods only focus on form-oriented learning rather than meaning-oriented learning. According to CLT, the language classroom may provide students with chance to engage in meaningful interaction. In the reading class for the non-English majors, we should pay attention to develop their reading strategies and skills, such as skimming, scanning, guessing, note-making, etc. We should tell students to read the text as a whole instead of explaining new words or sentence structure.

For example, in teaching An Unusual Job in Active English, my students are made to engage in two steps during the reading: First, survey the reading text. After three minutes, close books and discuss what they found out . Second, read the text again properly, and answer the questions.

The purpose in the first step is to train students to read quickly to get the general meaning of the text. Skimming is a very valuable reading strategy. It gives readers the advantage of being able to predict the purpose of the passage, the main topic or message, and possibly some of the developing or supporting ideas. During reading, the teacher may remind the students of the possible locations of important information, such as the title, the first or the last paragraph of a text, the first or the last sentence of a paragraph and the italics, and indicators like "First , Second , Third ", "in contrast", "for example", "in addition", "in conclusion". This way, they soon get the main idea of the text, look the text as a coherent meaning one.

The second step is to read the text again and answer the questions. To answer these questions, students have to become curious, tackle the text as an organic whole, selecting those that they judge to be the most relevant to the questions they are going to answer. This step is to get further understanding of the meaning. Teacher should make sure students know their purpose in reading, prompt students to look for specific information from the text and help them probe more deeply into the reading material. This is another valuable reading strategy - scanning, which is quickly searching for some particular piece or pieces of information in a text. During reading, there are quite a few words students do not know their meanings. Many students are afraid when they come across new words. Quite often, they stop reading to look it up in a dictionary. Obviously in that way may slow down reading speed. An effective way to help them overcome the problem is guessing. Such as this sentence from the text An Unusual Job "To become qualified, I had to learn six different skills, sub-aqua, sky-diving, horse-riding etc." The word "sub-aqua" students do not know its meaning, but from the context, they can guess it's a kind of stunt. The teacher should encourage students to practice guessing activities.

In such teaching and learning process, the students may become more effective in meaning learning.

3.4 Encourage students to construct their personal interpretation

Based on constructivism, individuals are actively involved in constructing personal meaning, which is their own personal understanding, from their experiences. With the enlightenment of the theory, in the reading teaching, teachers should give students a lot of encouragement before they venture to construct their personal interpretation of the text. Again, take the text An Unusual Job as example. I design the following questions for my students to discuss in pair or group work. Have you ever seen any Superman films? If so what is your opinion of them?What is your opinion of the stunt woman Sarah Franzi? Do you think she is crazy? Would you like to work as a stuntman or woman? With such post-reading activities, it is easy to arouse students' interest to take part in discussion. Post-reading discussion is to provide students with opportunities for meaningful language production based on their interpretations of a text. The students are asked to discuss in pairs or groups. The discussion may include finding out the theme of a text; evaluating characters; tracing the development of thought; linking the text with students' own experience, etc. Pair or group work is an efficient way to improve students' communicative competency and motivate students to express their own thoughts. During the process, the students become more active in constructing their personal interpretation of the text..

4. Conclusion

The constructivist view of reading has many implications for language teachers. In light of the view of constructivist learning theory, English reading teaching for the Non-English undergraduates should be an active process involving suitable reading tasks, meaning-oriented learning, activities which can activate the students' schema, and encourage students to construct their personal interpretation so as to enable students gradually to grow into effective meaning-makers in English reading learning.

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