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Reflection 2

The document discusses the effectiveness of constructivism as a language learning theory for primary school students, emphasizing that learners construct knowledge through contextualized and communicative interactions. It highlights the importance of cognitive and social constructivism in teaching methods, where students engage with peers and relate new information to their existing knowledge. The CEFR textbook activities are designed to foster collaboration and confidence in language use, ultimately aiming to create proficient English users in real-world contexts.

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Thurga AB Krishenan
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5 views2 pages

Reflection 2

The document discusses the effectiveness of constructivism as a language learning theory for primary school students, emphasizing that learners construct knowledge through contextualized and communicative interactions. It highlights the importance of cognitive and social constructivism in teaching methods, where students engage with peers and relate new information to their existing knowledge. The CEFR textbook activities are designed to foster collaboration and confidence in language use, ultimately aiming to create proficient English users in real-world contexts.

Uploaded by

Thurga AB Krishenan
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

As a teacher of a primary school, I personally believe that constructivism is the theory

of language learning that suits my students best.

A strongly contextualized approach to learning is constructivism, according to which


learners construct knowledge rather than just passively take in information. Knowledge is
seen as the internalization of external reality. Applied to language learning and language
teaching, this approach strongly advocates language use in realistic contexts of
communicative interaction, which creates opportunities for creating new knowledge from
experience. The learner is seen as an autonomous organism that actively seeks opportunities
for development and is actively engaged in knowledge construction. Social and cognitive
constructivism are the major types of constructivism theory that can be found in the
activities/tasks given in the book.

Cognitive constructivism focuses on the idea that learning should be related to the
learner’s stage of cognitive development. These methods work to help students in learning
new information by connecting it to things they already know, enabling them to make
modifications in their existing intelligence to accommodate the new information. Social
constructivism focuses on the collaborative nature of learning. Knowledge develops from
how people interact with each other, their culture, and society at large. Students rely on others
to help create their building blocks, and learning from others helps them construct their own
knowledge and reality.

In CEFR textbook, most of the activities are based on social constructivism where
pupils were asked to interview their friends and also share their experiences or culture and
society. Pupils were given plenty of opportunities to interact with their peers. There are even
topics such as “Where are you from?” and also “Festivals” where pupils get chances to learn
more about their peers. These activities and topics are related to cognitive constructivism
where it helped them to enrich their existing knowledge. It gave children confidence to learn
the language as it connects to their world. CEFR hopes that the language users will be
proficient users of English in the real world.

I believe that this method of teaching is effective for students who learn better in a
hands-on environment and helps students to better relate the information learned in the
classroom to their lives. The constructivism curriculum also caters to the students' prior
knowledge, encourages teachers to spend more time on the students' favourite topics and
allows teachers to focus on important and relevant information. In a constructivism
classroom, students often work in groups. This helps students learn social skills, support each
other’s learning process and value each other’s opinion and input. In a nutshell, I would say
that by applying constructivism in classroom students become expert learners in actively
constructing knowledge instead of reproducing a series of facts.

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