The Application of Psychology in Teaching A 2500-word paper "The Application of Educational Psychology in English Teaching"
This paper discusses the influence and enlightenment of educational psychology on English teaching by summarizing three educational schools of psychology: behaviorism learning theory, cognitive learning theory and humanistic learning theory.
Keywords: Educational Psychology English Teaching Behaviorism Understanding Psychological Humanism
I. Introduction
Language teaching is inseparable from the guidance of psychology. The basic viewpoint of psychology is one of the theoretical foundations of various teaching methods. Besides,? One of the characteristics of the development of modern science is interdisciplinary influence and mutual penetration? (Gui Shichun, 2000), Educational Psychology is an interdisciplinary subject of pedagogy and psychology, and its basic viewpoints and characteristics are directly related to teaching. This paper analyzes the application of educational psychology theory in foreign language teaching, hoping to find an organic combination of foreign language teaching and educational psychology.
Second, the main theories of educational psychology
As far as learning theory is concerned, educational psychology can be summarized into three schools: behaviorism, cognitivism and humanism. Summarized as follows:
1. behaviorism (behaviorism)
The basic theory of behaviorism school is that learning is the combination of stimulation and reflection or the strengthening and change of behavior habits. Teaching is a process of restraining behavior. Teachers make students change their behavior in the expected direction by controlling rewards and punishments and incentives. They advocate programmed teaching.
1. 1 Overview of theoretical development
Behaviorism school originated in the early 20th century 19. American psychologist Thomdike proposed behavior through animal experiments. Stimulus-response? Theory (theory and response). He put animals? Study? Think of an action as the result of stimulus (S) and reaction (R), that is, animals are repeating? Practice? And get satisfied? Effect? On the move? Study? . In 19 10, Thomdike summarized it as? Practice rate? (Practice rule) What else? Efficient? (the law of effect), and directly used to explain human learning behavior. He believes that repeated practice and satisfactory results will constantly stimulate and strengthen behavior until conditioned reflex behavior is formed. 19 14, American psychologist Watson published Behavior: An Introduction to Comparative Psychology. He advocates that psychologists should take behavior rather than consciousness as the research object, and the behavior schema of organisms (including animals and humans) is stimulation and response, so the S-R formula is the basic principle to explain behavior, and the task of psychology is to find out the regular relationship between S-R, so as to infer the response according to the stimulus or the stimulus according to the response, so as to achieve the purpose of predicting and controlling behavior. Therefore, Watson is usually regarded as the founder of behaviorism.
Enlightenment and application of 1.2
Although behaviorism learning theory is not perfect, it has a great influence on teaching theory and practice through S-R mode. For example, the teaching method of listening and speaking, which originated in the United States in the 1940s, is influenced by the theory of behavioral psychology, emphasizing the mechanical training of language and thinking that the formation of a behavioral habit must be practiced repeatedly. For many years, English classroom teaching has always emphasized intensive reading and more practice, which is also to consolidate and improve learning efficiency through repeated practice. According to S-R theory, in English teaching, teachers should be good at discovering and forming reinforcement that is beneficial to English learning, and strengthen students' responses in time to let students know the results of their learning. Students' success in learning is encouraged and their mistakes are fed back, which helps them to adjust and correct their behavior at any time. Teachers praise and encourage students who actively participate in classroom discussions and insist on writing comments on students' homework; The compilation of teaching materials is from easy to difficult, step by step, which is convenient for students to learn according to the progress, and produces pleasure and satisfaction from it, all of which are influenced by behaviorism school. The emergence and development of listening and speaking teaching method is also based on behaviorism school. The above methods have undoubtedly played a certain role in English teaching. The negative effect of behaviorism school's program teaching is to mechanize learning, so that students' learning is limited to certain behavioral procedures and models, and the independence and creativity of learning are difficult to play. At the same time, teachers' dominance and creativity have also been greatly weakened. Therefore, cognitive psychology has been developed and applied to English teaching.
2. Cognitive psychology.
The learning view of cognitive school holds that learning is the organization and reorganization of cognitive structure and the process of seeking knowledge and information processing. Knowledge comes from the interaction between subject and object, and teaching is to guide students to carry out meaningful learning and knowledge construction based on their original experience, psychological structure and beliefs. Therefore, the cognitive school pays attention to and emphasizes the initiative, sociality and situational nature of learning.
2.2 Review of theoretical development
Since the 1950s, the cognitive school has turned from studying external stimuli and behavioral responses to studying internal cognitive processes, becoming the opposite of the behavioral school. A basic assumption of cognitive psychology is that people reproduce the world around them through thinking, and human thinking is an information processing process. In other words, the cognitive school believes that behavior is mediated and dominated by consciousness; Learning depends on subjective organizational structure to form a gestalt? Cognitive structure? The subject is active in learning, not passive and blind.
By the end of 1970s, Ausubel, Bruner and Nesai were in Piaget. Constructivism? On this basis, modern cognitive psychology has been formed and entered the stage of rapid development at present. Piaget, through a long-term study of children's intellectual development, put forward the famous? Constructivism? (Constructivism) What else? Cognitive schema theory? Piaget believes that children are in the process of interacting with their surroundings, such as? Assimilation? (Assimilate) Then what? Adapt? (adaptation), gradually establish knowledge about the outside world, so as to develop their own cognitive structure. ? Assimilation? It refers to the process that learners integrate the information provided by external stimuli into their original cognitive structure to process changes. If learners can't absorb new stimuli with the original schema, they should modify or rebuild the original schema to adapt to the environment. ? Adapt? It refers to the process that learners adjust their internal structure to adapt to specific stimulus situations. Assimilation expands the cognitive structure quantitatively, while adaptation changes the cognitive structure qualitatively. Cognitive individual clearance? Assimilation? And then what? Adapt? These two forms achieve a balance with the surrounding environment.
Bruner believes that learning is a process of obtaining meaning and intention through cognition, emphasizes the process of students' active learning, attaches importance to the internal reinforcement brought by learning activities, and advocates discovery learning. Discover how to learn. Learner-centered? By stimulating students' interest in learning and strong learning motivation, teachers let students discover laws and principles through logical thinking activities such as observation, analysis and induction, so as to cultivate students' ability to analyze and solve problems independently. Ausubel put forward the theory of cognitive assimilation, which holds that students' learning should be meaningful learning, and meaningful learning is cognitive learning. It has two premises: first, new content must be related to existing knowledge; Second, the learning content can be related to the existing knowledge structure. The psychological mechanism of meaningful learning is assimilation. Whether students can get new information mainly depends on the existing concepts in their cognitive structure. The interaction leads to the assimilation of the meaning of old and new knowledge, so that not only the new knowledge gets meaning, but also the old knowledge is modified to get new meaning.
2.3 Enlightenment and Application
The direct method advocates relying on and using the learned language materials to the maximum extent, and advocates teaching foreign languages in foreign languages to directly stimulate students' hearing, vision and other speech kinesthetic organs. Modern cognitive school believes that human beings construct reality on the basis of their own experience. Its schema theory is widely used in English reading. It is believed that topic sentences, article genre characteristics and structural rules are important external conditions that affect reading comprehension, while readers' original knowledge and cognitive structure are internal conditions that affect the realization of reading comprehension and analysis skills. Constructivist emphasis of modern cognitive theory? Study? Centered on this, it is believed that English learning is not only the acquisition of language habits, but also the creative use of language structures. Whether it is the choice of topics, the development of activities, or the answer of questions, teachers often need to participate. However, this kind of participation does not require teachers to simply act as imparting knowledge, but to act as participants, promoters, organizers and instructors of students' learning. Gallagher and Steven pointed out that in problem-based learning, teachers should play a new role as metacognitive instructors, help students understand the questions to be asked, classify them, and find possible explanations or solutions in the process of defining problems, collecting, analyzing and synthesizing information. In problem-based learning, the step of solving problems is not a preset linear process, but a process of problem definition, hypothesis testing, evaluation, problem redefinition and hypothesis testing again. The teacher first demonstrates counseling, and then asks students to use their own skills to solve problems. Through this cognitive consultation process, students can become truly self-directed and independent learners, and master the methods to solve some complex problems.
3. humanism.
This school believes that cognition is the development of the pre-formed structure within the subject. Learning is a process of self-expression and realization of personality, potential and value. Teaching is a process of behavior constraint, and its essence lies in creating a situation that can produce expected results. What effect does this situation have on students? Operational restrictions? Function and guidance, that is, teaching is to create a safe and relaxed learning environment for students' self-realization and let students actively participate in the educational process.
3. 1 Overview of theoretical development
Humanistic psychology, represented by American psychologists Maslow and Rogers, rose in the 1950s. This school mainly studies and cares about all aspects of human experience, such as human nature, human inner feelings, intelligence, potential, purpose, hobbies, interests and values. Its ideological origin and philosophical basis are western humanitarian tradition and modern existentialism. Maslow's motivation theory holds that all human behaviors are caused by needs, and the development of human motivation is closely related to the satisfaction of needs, with different levels of needs. The low-level needs are physiological needs, followed by the needs of security, love and belonging, respect and self-realization. Self-realization refers to the full play of creative potential, and the pursuit of self-realization is the highest motivation of human beings. High-level self-realization has the characteristics of surpassing self and has high social value. Rogers believes that everyone is born with a tendency to realize himself. Humanistic learning psychology believes that learning is also a process of exerting potential and realizing self. It holds that the relationship between human potential and value and social environment is the relationship between internal and external factors, potential is the dominant factor and foundation of value, environment is the condition to limit or promote the development of potential, and its role is to allow or help people realize their potential in the final analysis. There is no contradiction between human potential and its social value, and giving full play to creative potential has the highest social value. Rogers believes that learning is a process of students' self-expression and self-realization. Students are the main body of learning, and teachers are just a consultant. The essence and fundamental task of teaching is to create a situation that makes students feel safe and relaxed, eliminate psychological pressure and burden, and let students dare to express their opinions and freely imagine and create.
3.2 Enlightenment and Application
The humanistic school represented by Maslow and Rogers affirms human nature, attaches importance to people's inner needs and emphasizes the realization of people's creative potential. These challenges to traditional education, especially in attaching importance to students' personality development and giving full play to their potential, have had a wide impact on the education sector in China. In basic English teaching? Happy education? 、? Easy study? Concept, and it has been popular in recent years. Crazy English? They all start with emotional education, emphasizing that teachers should create a harmonious and relaxed educational environment and let students actively participate in the educational process, so that the process of English teaching can become a process to help each student fully explore their potential, develop their personality and realize their own value. ? Humanism school? With what? Student-centered? The idea of advocating creation? Real? Is it easy? Accept? And then what? Do you understand? Good interpersonal relationship, in the intimate and harmonious interpersonal relationship between teachers and students, makes students feel safe in English learning, dare to express themselves truly, fully display their personality and creatively exert their potential. I think this is very important in college English teaching, because doing it well often can change students' attitude towards English learning, [1] help students establish correct values of foreign language learning, [2] bring teachers and students closer and become students' bosom friends; Start by talking about their concerns, find the same topic and really care about them. This is very effective for students who have difficulties in English learning, and his attitude will change soon; [3] Good at induction, proper teaching methods, relaxed atmosphere, and persistent long-term repeated ideological work; [4] Strive for the close cooperation of parents, and strive for the educational synergy of society and other off-campus educational institutions to form a strong educational force.
Third, the conclusion
The relationship between educational psychology and English teaching goes far beyond the scope of psycholinguistics and cognitive linguistics. The role and application of educational psychology theory in English teaching can be extended to the study of learners' learning motivation, learning methods, the relationship between learning experience and grades, and all external factors that affect academic performance. How to apply the content of educational psychology in English teaching is a very meaningful topic.
References:
[1] Pi Liansheng. Psychology of learning and teaching. People's Education Press, 1997.
[2] Ye Lan. A new probe into teachers' role and development. Education Science Press, 200 1.
[3], Wang Cairen, Jia. Psychology of Foreign Language Education. Guangxi Education Press, 200 1.
[4] Gong Yafu, Luo Shaoqian. English teaching evaluation. People's Education Press, 2002.
Click the next page to learn more >>& gt The application of psychology in teaching: 2500 words?