Dialogue and Construction

Author: Zhou Qichao
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-12-01
Features: The new curriculum reform requires liberating students' thinking and restoring their freedom of speech, thought, and action. This demands teachers to transform their educational concepts, shifting focus from teaching methods to learning methods, from teachers to students, and from results to the process. It involves changing the lecture-based approach to an inquiry-based one. In summary, everything should be student-centered. "Dialogue" is undoubtedly an excellent form of promoting students' independent development and has become a staple in modern Chinese language classrooms. How to effectively conduct "dialogue" to enhance students' Chinese literacy is a question worth exploring. This paper closely examines the four key elements of constructivism and explains its guiding role in applying "dialogue." Currently, in Chinese language classroom teaching, "dialogue" primarily manifests as dialogue between students and teachers, students and texts, students and peers, and students and themselves, with the latter being particularly central. How to conduct meaningful "dialogue" in the classroom is a significant challenge facing every Chinese language educator. In my opinion, constructivist theory provides new insights that are conducive to conducting effective "dialogue." The learning process is not passive reception but a meaning-making process based on existing knowledge and experiences. It is a process of dialogue between students and themselves under the stimulation of external contexts. When facing teachers and texts, students mobilize their existing knowledge and experiences to select, filter, and discriminate, searching for similar or related points in their knowledge structures to transform and integrate them, thereby completing a "meaning construction" process. In Chinese language teaching, meaning construction is particularly important, and self-dialogue plays a crucial role. The "Curriculum Standards" place great emphasis on this, stating: "When appreciating literary works, students should have their own emotional experiences" and "students should engage in active and positive thinking and emotional activities to deepen their understanding and reflection, gain insights and thoughts, be moved emotionally, receive intellectual enlightenment, and enjoy aesthetic pleasure." When reading literary works, students are constantly engaged in self-dialogue, continuously communicating and struggling with another self within them, thereby discovering, evaluating, and enriching themselves. They compare themselves with the characters in the works, discarding their limitations, prejudices, ugliness, ignorance, and indifference, while showcasing their passion, inspiration, courage, tolerance, and creativity. This process of self-dialogue is the process of experiencing emotions toward literary works and is even more the process of completing meaning construction and enhancing Chinese literacy. In this sense, without students' active self-dialogue, texts become meaningless symbols, and teachers' explanations become dull and monotonous. Of course, we cannot deny the role of teachers. In the process of meaning construction, the teacher's task is to make self-dialogue conscious, habitual, and rational. When teaching "The Sinking of the 'Normandy'," I designed the following topic for the final activity: "How would you evaluate Captain Harville as a character?" Students' responses were diverse, ultimately forming two opposing viewpoints: (1) Captain Harville is a dedicated and hero, possessing selfless qualities; (2) Captain Harville is careless and afraid of responsibility. Although both sides had their own arguments, I understood that students, while reading, mobilized their life experiences and reading insights, using a "moral scale" to evaluate. I then further guided them: "If you were Captain Harville, what would you do?" In such discussions, students' emotions were moved, their thoughts were enlightened, their moral evaluation systems were supplemented and improved, and their collaborative and expressive abilities were exercised and enhanced. "Dialogue" is an effective way to improve Chinese literacy and is the application of constructivist theory in teaching. As teachers, we should, under the guidance of this theory, create suitable learning environments for students, facilitate collaboration between teachers and students, and among students themselves, enabling them to complete meaning construction through self-dialogue and thereby enhance their Chinese literacy.