Blending the social-constructivist with the instructivist approach to teaching English as a foreign language at the department of English language and literature at Damascus University

Abstract EN

This paper seeks to examine quality enhancement of teaching English at the department of English language and literature at Damascus University in the light of the new pedagogical developments of the third millennium.

To highlight the teaching/learning constraints and challenges, the study was carried out first by investigating the current teaching model used by faculty members and second by surveying the coping strategies used by top students to support their learning.

In a department that hosts over 11,000 undergraduate students, numbers may seem to be the biggest challenge, yet with the paradigm shift in pedagogical theories and the advent of new technologies and multimedia, numbers may cease to be a hindrance and may be turned into an asset.

Evidence from this research reinforced the view that the current model of education at the department of English language and Literature at Damascus University is purely instructivist.

Evidence also showed that the collaborative spirit prevails amongst learners in this mass educational context.

To be able to meet the requirements of education in the third millennium, there is no doubt that we need to reconsider our philosophy of learning to accommodate new approaches using technological developments and multimedia.

A socioconstructivist approach to teaching and learning blended with the current instructivist approach is thus recommended.

These recommendations will be the first step towards turning masses of students into a learning tool.

This will help transform the current prevailing collaborative spirit amongst learners into a more powerful tool; a tool for socialconstructivist learning that will blend into and complement the current instructivist approach.