社会建构主义对英语自主学习的启示(英文)

Abstract: In recent years, students’ learner autonomy has drawn great attention of educators and psychologists. Constructivism, as a relatively new theory in psychology, has an intensive impact on students’ learning. This paper not only discusses learner autonomy including its definition, importance, characteristics and its related researches, but also analyses the theory of Constructivism, such as its theoretic basis, main theories, and teaching mode. On this basis, it reveals the enlightenment of Constructivism to English learner autonomy.

Key words: Learner autonomy; Social Constructivism; Enlightenment

摘  要：近年来，学生的自主学习能力受到教育者和心理学家的高度重视。建构主义理论，作为心理学的一种新理论，对学生的学习产生了广泛的影响。本文不仅阐述了自主学习的问题，包括它的定义、重要性、特点以及相关研究，而且论述了建构主义的一些理论，例如理论基础，教学模式。在此基础上，揭示了社会建构主义理论对英语自主学习的启示。

关键词：自主学习；社会建构主义；启示

Introduction
With the development of economy and advanced technology, traditional education can not meet the demand of skilled people, which has driven a large number of educational workers and psychologists to make research to find effective teaching and learning methods. In the past, the teacher-centered teaching mode was commonly adopted. With the method, the teacher spent the majority of class time on his lecture. As a result, his students had so little chance to practice that they became passive language receivers with weak awareness of autonomous learning. The majority of students depended on their teachers to a large extent and was inactive in studying, which was disadvantageous to English learning. With the development of language teaching to communication, the traditional teaching method was challenged and there appeared a series of educational reforms in the higher education. “The theory and practice of autonomous learning have become increasingly popular in foreign language education, which has inspired much insightful research.” [1] Autonomous learning means that students must take more learning responsibility. Therefore, teachers should try their best to create a kind of studying environments for students so that they have more opportunities to show or examine their knowledge and ability, which leads to an active autonomous learning atmosphere, where students learn to find problems, consider problems and finally solve them. By this means, students’ autonomous learning awareness comes into being. At the same time, due to the extensive application of multimedia and internet technology, the teaching theory of constructivism shows its advantage and is more and more popular with people working on education. Many scholars and educational experts have made plenty of researches on the theory of constructivism and produced an amount of productive fruits. And some have applied the Constructivism theory to English autonomous learning. There are some representatives and their dissertation works: “English Autonomous Learning in University under the Framework of Constructivism and the People-centered Theory” (Wang Jianwei, Yang Jie); “Learner Autonomy Training under the Framework of Constructivism” (Peng Xia, Peng Xiaolan). Therefore, the author wants to set forth the enlightenment of Constructivism to English learner autonomy. This paper is divided into three parts: the first part is to introduce something about autonomous learning; the second part is to interpret the Constructivism theory and some important educational theories of Constructivism such as the teaching theory and the learning theory; and in the last part, the enlightenment of Constructivism to English autonomous learning is discussed.

1  Learner autonomy
Cultivating ability of autonomous learning has drawn great attention from abroad and domestic scholars and experts since 1980’s. In recent 20 years, learner autonomy has become a hot topic in foreign language teaching community. Holec pointed out that schools should set two teaching destinations: one is to help students obtain language and communicative skills; the other is to help students gain autonomy----how to study. Benson also thought that learner autonomy should become the goal of university education [2]. More and more people realize that learner autonomy should be the aim of every learner; at the same time, every teacher has agreed on the educational community.
1. 1 Definition of autonomous learning
The concept of autonomous learning stemmed from debates about the development of life long learning skills and the development of independent thinkers both of which originated in the 1960s. Autonomous learning is on the threshold of acceptable pedagogic institutionalization. It is a necessity for EFL teachers to make sense of the favoring features of the textbooks and other teaching materials before implementing the ideology in teaching operation and practice. In 1981 Holec had defined autonomy as “the ability to take charge of one’s own learning”. [3] Dickinson develops the definition of autonomy as a “situation in which the learner is totally responsible for all of the decisions concerned with his (or her) learning and the implantation of those decisions”. [4] In David Little’s words, “the basis of learner of autonomy is that the learner accepts responsibility for his or her learning” and “It entails a positive attitude to learning and the development of a capacity to reflect on the content and process of learning with a view to bringing them as far as possible under conscious control”. [5] Little sees learner autonomy as “essentially a matter of the learner’s psychological relation to the process and content of learning”. [6] An example of viewing autonomy as an educational practice comes from Bound who suggests that, as well as being an educational goal; autonomy is an “approach to educational practice”. 转贴于 酷文网-论文下载中心 http://www.coolwen.net