论文部分内容阅读
Qingdao Naval Submarine Academy， Qingdao 266071， China
Abstract： During the Information Age， the wide application of multimedia net technology has opened up a brand new field for computer—assisted language learning（CALL） making the teaching system more reasonable and effective. Surely， neither should the practitioners be blindly led by the technological innovation， nor deny the function of CALL in language teaching. In this thesis， it’s demonstrated that constructivism and cognitive structure are the solid theoretical foundation of the classroom teaching modes of CALL， i.e. following the principles of constructivism， the teacher should label and organize the multimedia and Internet to an appropriate extend with consideration of the students’ cognition.
Key words： CALL； multi—media； constructivism and cognitive structure； reading teaching
Reading is an important channel to acquire knowledge. As a chief way and an objective in English language teaching， intensive reading can help students achieve language competence. However， the traditional intensive teaching， has put too much effort and time on words， expressions and sentences rather than acquirement of the context and structure as a whole. Even worse， for lack of rich and various teaching means， the tedious duck—stuffing teaching mode has put an end to the students’ interests and initiative. No doubt， the students’ competence has declined or stagnated. As a result， the most urgent affairs for the English teachers are how to enrich the teaching means and conceive a relative English teaching methodology corresponding to the features of acquisitive youth.
During the Information Age， the wide application of multimedia net technology has opened up a brand new field for computer—assisted language learning（CALL）. To probe into CALL， a case study has been done to examine the perceived benefits of computers in English reading course through an assessment of the appropriateness and the effectiveness of the courseware. The students are found to achieve and enjoy more in CALL. With the inspiring results， it’s illustrated that the CALL well—built on the constructivism theory will make the teaching system more reasonable and effective. Besides， the author further demonstrates how to improve the teaching of reading and enhance classroom efficiency by means of multimedia and the Internet through plenty of questionnaires and experiments.
During research， four obstacles are found to have baffled the students’ language learning. First， the unskilled reader perceives the text as a chain of isolated words； secondly， the traditional teaching mode is not interesting enough to arouse the students’ interest； next， for lack of cultural background knowledge， it’s difficult for students to further understand the passage； finally， as Confucian and Buddhist doctrines have rooted firmly on Chinese minds， the Chinese students are more likely to be timid and cautious in learning for sake of “keeping one’s face”. To clear these， relative ways have been worked out through study of CALL. First， multimedia technology seem more suitable to prepare students by “help them build background knowledge on the topic reading， through appropriate pre—reading activities（Carrell 1988 b：245） which is building new background knowledge as well as activating existing background knowledge. Using multimedia can rapidly demonstrate background knowledge related to the text and help the students construct relevant schema. Second， reading is seen as a complex， holistic process during which the reader is interacting with the text to construct meanings. Multimedia and the Internet provide students with network electronic environment which allows students to construct their own representations of the content， to communicate with peers regarding their work， and to “support an authentic relationship between learner and experts” （Goodrum & Knuth， 1991）. Third， extensive reading is generally associated with reading large amounts with the aim of getting an overall understanding of the material. Readers are more concerned with the meaning of the text than the meaning of individual words or sentences. Fourth， multimedia and net work technology not only provide friendly and audio—visual mutual learning environment in the form of hypertext and hyper chain， but also provide lovely pictures， pleasant sounds or colorful tableaus to stimulate students’ senses. Last but not least， with multimedia reading software， students won’t have to worry about public loss of face at errors. Students are learning English at their pace and interests and no longer afraid of losing face because of their different reading ability.
Practically， CALL does achieve the goal of improving students’ communicating and language—applying competence. CALL modes of teaching and learning can increase the variety or diversity of learning opportunities and the quality of the learning experience in making input of more varied kinds learnable and accessible to each individual learner. Accessibility can be thought of as both physical access to information—bring information to the user’s fingertips— as well as psychological and cognitive access. The cognitive accessibility of information is the degree to which it is congruent with the user’s mental schema or knowledge structures. Besides， Electronic networks offer a real audience for English among Chinese students who would not ordinarily speak the second language with each other. The computer can scaffold learning by invoking contexts as structures of a learning activity or as virtual worlds within which the computer user navigates language and the communication process more generally. The computer also makes it possible to externalize the structure of thought and of reasoning by linguistic means. As a device which simulates and at the same time partners the user’s processes of thinking， reasoning and communicating， the computer also has the potential to change these processes. Altogether， multimedia and the Internet with a lot of advantages can establish highly interactive learning environments for students and help them develop a systematic and scientific reading habit. But still， some people argue that the practitioners should not be blindly led by the latest technological innovation， which will attend to trifles and neglect the essentials. Yet， others maintain that developments in CALL should be technology—led to the greatest extend. In author’s view， CALL based on the constructivism and cognitive structure can achieve the students’ reading competence.
As usual， the study has its limitations. First， it’s hard to quantify to what exact extend to use the multimedia， which mostly relies on the teacher’s quality and students’ cognition. Second， because of the small sample size and diversity of participant learning context， these findings can’t be generalized to the greater language learning population. A replication study with a greater number of subjects is needed in order to obtain reliable and generalized results. Last but not least， in using self—report data there is always the potential for error in recall.
For a long—term study， as the current teaching is exam—oriented， it’s a tough and challengeable mission to increase examinees’ score through CALL without the cost of their competence. On the other hand， there are now quite few proper courseware for intensive reading teaching. To meet this demands， all the practitioners and educators should collaborate with software developers to contrive the proper and novel courseware on college English reading.
References
1 Allen， E.， Bernhardt， E.， Berry， M.， and Demel’s M. （1988）. Comprehension and text genre： An analysis of secondary school foreign language readers. Modern Language Journal， 72， 163—172
2 Asher， J. （1977）， Learning Another Language Through Actions： The Complete Teacher’s Guidebook （Los Gatos， Calif.： Sky Oak Productions）.
3 Bacon ，S.， and Finnemann， M. （1990）. A study of the attitudes， motives， and strategies of university foreign language students and their disposition to authentic oral and written input. The Modern Language Journal， 74， 459—473
Abstract： During the Information Age， the wide application of multimedia net technology has opened up a brand new field for computer—assisted language learning（CALL） making the teaching system more reasonable and effective. Surely， neither should the practitioners be blindly led by the technological innovation， nor deny the function of CALL in language teaching. In this thesis， it’s demonstrated that constructivism and cognitive structure are the solid theoretical foundation of the classroom teaching modes of CALL， i.e. following the principles of constructivism， the teacher should label and organize the multimedia and Internet to an appropriate extend with consideration of the students’ cognition.
Key words： CALL； multi—media； constructivism and cognitive structure； reading teaching
Reading is an important channel to acquire knowledge. As a chief way and an objective in English language teaching， intensive reading can help students achieve language competence. However， the traditional intensive teaching， has put too much effort and time on words， expressions and sentences rather than acquirement of the context and structure as a whole. Even worse， for lack of rich and various teaching means， the tedious duck—stuffing teaching mode has put an end to the students’ interests and initiative. No doubt， the students’ competence has declined or stagnated. As a result， the most urgent affairs for the English teachers are how to enrich the teaching means and conceive a relative English teaching methodology corresponding to the features of acquisitive youth.
During the Information Age， the wide application of multimedia net technology has opened up a brand new field for computer—assisted language learning（CALL）. To probe into CALL， a case study has been done to examine the perceived benefits of computers in English reading course through an assessment of the appropriateness and the effectiveness of the courseware. The students are found to achieve and enjoy more in CALL. With the inspiring results， it’s illustrated that the CALL well—built on the constructivism theory will make the teaching system more reasonable and effective. Besides， the author further demonstrates how to improve the teaching of reading and enhance classroom efficiency by means of multimedia and the Internet through plenty of questionnaires and experiments.
During research， four obstacles are found to have baffled the students’ language learning. First， the unskilled reader perceives the text as a chain of isolated words； secondly， the traditional teaching mode is not interesting enough to arouse the students’ interest； next， for lack of cultural background knowledge， it’s difficult for students to further understand the passage； finally， as Confucian and Buddhist doctrines have rooted firmly on Chinese minds， the Chinese students are more likely to be timid and cautious in learning for sake of “keeping one’s face”. To clear these， relative ways have been worked out through study of CALL. First， multimedia technology seem more suitable to prepare students by “help them build background knowledge on the topic reading， through appropriate pre—reading activities（Carrell 1988 b：245） which is building new background knowledge as well as activating existing background knowledge. Using multimedia can rapidly demonstrate background knowledge related to the text and help the students construct relevant schema. Second， reading is seen as a complex， holistic process during which the reader is interacting with the text to construct meanings. Multimedia and the Internet provide students with network electronic environment which allows students to construct their own representations of the content， to communicate with peers regarding their work， and to “support an authentic relationship between learner and experts” （Goodrum & Knuth， 1991）. Third， extensive reading is generally associated with reading large amounts with the aim of getting an overall understanding of the material. Readers are more concerned with the meaning of the text than the meaning of individual words or sentences. Fourth， multimedia and net work technology not only provide friendly and audio—visual mutual learning environment in the form of hypertext and hyper chain， but also provide lovely pictures， pleasant sounds or colorful tableaus to stimulate students’ senses. Last but not least， with multimedia reading software， students won’t have to worry about public loss of face at errors. Students are learning English at their pace and interests and no longer afraid of losing face because of their different reading ability.
Practically， CALL does achieve the goal of improving students’ communicating and language—applying competence. CALL modes of teaching and learning can increase the variety or diversity of learning opportunities and the quality of the learning experience in making input of more varied kinds learnable and accessible to each individual learner. Accessibility can be thought of as both physical access to information—bring information to the user’s fingertips— as well as psychological and cognitive access. The cognitive accessibility of information is the degree to which it is congruent with the user’s mental schema or knowledge structures. Besides， Electronic networks offer a real audience for English among Chinese students who would not ordinarily speak the second language with each other. The computer can scaffold learning by invoking contexts as structures of a learning activity or as virtual worlds within which the computer user navigates language and the communication process more generally. The computer also makes it possible to externalize the structure of thought and of reasoning by linguistic means. As a device which simulates and at the same time partners the user’s processes of thinking， reasoning and communicating， the computer also has the potential to change these processes. Altogether， multimedia and the Internet with a lot of advantages can establish highly interactive learning environments for students and help them develop a systematic and scientific reading habit. But still， some people argue that the practitioners should not be blindly led by the latest technological innovation， which will attend to trifles and neglect the essentials. Yet， others maintain that developments in CALL should be technology—led to the greatest extend. In author’s view， CALL based on the constructivism and cognitive structure can achieve the students’ reading competence.
As usual， the study has its limitations. First， it’s hard to quantify to what exact extend to use the multimedia， which mostly relies on the teacher’s quality and students’ cognition. Second， because of the small sample size and diversity of participant learning context， these findings can’t be generalized to the greater language learning population. A replication study with a greater number of subjects is needed in order to obtain reliable and generalized results. Last but not least， in using self—report data there is always the potential for error in recall.
For a long—term study， as the current teaching is exam—oriented， it’s a tough and challengeable mission to increase examinees’ score through CALL without the cost of their competence. On the other hand， there are now quite few proper courseware for intensive reading teaching. To meet this demands， all the practitioners and educators should collaborate with software developers to contrive the proper and novel courseware on college English reading.
References
1 Allen， E.， Bernhardt， E.， Berry， M.， and Demel’s M. （1988）. Comprehension and text genre： An analysis of secondary school foreign language readers. Modern Language Journal， 72， 163—172
2 Asher， J. （1977）， Learning Another Language Through Actions： The Complete Teacher’s Guidebook （Los Gatos， Calif.： Sky Oak Productions）.
3 Bacon ，S.， and Finnemann， M. （1990）. A study of the attitudes， motives， and strategies of university foreign language students and their disposition to authentic oral and written input. The Modern Language Journal， 74， 459—473