3)Repositioning of the teachers
Teachers should transfer their roles from teachers to guiders and become the students' helper and instructor. Such assistance, guiding roles are reflected in:
A、stimulating students' interest and helping them to develop lasting motivation
B、helping the students to construct the meaning of current knowledge through the creation of situation in accordance with the teaching content requirements and clues that indicate the relation between old and new knowledge.
C、making meaning construction more effective, teachers should organize collaborative learning and lead the process as possible as they can.
2.4 Relationship between Constructivism and Cultivation of Innovation Capability in Extensive Reading
The viewpoints of constructivism on knowledge, learning and teaching are consistent with the spirit of innovation and education we promoted. It provides a theoretical foundation for the cultivation of the innovation capability of English majors in Chinese colleges and universities.
In recent years, School of Foreign Languages, Nanjing University and other colleges, have done some research on how to cultivate students' innovation capacity and listed some reform schemes on teaching methods on the basis of this theory. They (Lv,2003;Peng,2010;Zheng,2006) found that during the learning process, most students learned by memory and imitation training, rather than by the training of constructive and creative learning. That is why students’ ability of creative thinking cannot be developed and their innovation capability is generally low. So, they explore ways to cultivate the innovation capability of English majors mainly from four aspects of curriculum setting, teaching content, teaching method and evaluation system.
However, although the scholars have put forward some practical advice on English majors' innovation capability cultivation on foundation courses and intensive reading courses (Tan,Lin,2009; Li,2007), the extensive reading course which is closely related to the cultivation of innovative ability has been rarely studied. Therefore, the cultivation of students' innovative capacity remains a major challenge in the English teaching reform on Extensive Reading.
3 Methodology
3.1 Participants
The sophomore students of English major enrolled in Nanjing University of Science and Technology (NJUST) are regarded as the subject of this paper, because they have received one year’s education of Extensive Reading, and have got a general understanding of the class. The other reason is that they will learn better if new teaching method is proposed. Having received professional learning for one year, they have accumulated some knowledge and experience and have developed certain ability of thinking and practicing. As it is the same teacher who teaches the four classes’ Extensive Reading, the author randomly picks one class to visit for a month. Then, forty-three of them are randomly chosen as participants to do questionnaire. They are from different areas of the country and are of different genders. Thirty-nine questionnaires are available. As for the interview, two of the thirty-nine sophomore English majors are randomly selected to be interviewed. In addition, the teacher of Extensive Reading in the second grade, Professor Duan who has an overall understanding of the course and students’ innovation capability gave his opinions during the interview.
3.2 Methods for Data Collection
Having visited sophomores’ extensive reading courses for one month, the author made a survey with questionnaire and interviews of students and the teacher. According to Wen(2002(4):12-17)’s understanding of the cultivation of innovation capability, the questionnaire is mainly designed for the students and contains 27 objective questions, concerning the innovation capability of extensive reading course of NJUST’s sophomore of English Major. It is designed into two parts, one is about students’ cognition of innovation capability and extensive reading course, and the other part is aimed to analyze their ability to innovate. The participants are informed of answering the questions according to their real situations and not being worried about the result since it is just for the writer’s writing purpose. The data collection is mainly conducted on the basis of the statistics got in the questionnaire, and the other details are from interviews of students and the teacher. With the results, the author tries to analyze the actuality of the students’ innovation capability in Extensive Reading. 论泛读教学中英语专业学生的创新能力(4):http://www.751com.cn/yingyu/lunwen_7619.html