English, in the modern world today, plays a very important role in English teaching.As we can see, the world is becoming smaller and smaller with the rapid developmentof modern science and technology. People easily get in touch with new apps orconvenient daily tools which come from foreign countries, especially from the USA.Meanwhile, most of the instructions on the products are written in English. On the otherhand, more and more Chinese people are traveling abroad, which makes it urgent forthem to learn a foreign language that can help them during their journey. And Englishcan be the most useful language for its popularity and widely use in the world.For the students at our school, Xiaode Middle school, which is located in the ruralcountryside in Sichuan province. And in such places like Xiaode, where there is lack ofEnglish environment, in another word, the students have few chances to use thelanguage they are learning. As a result most of them are poor in English. They onlylearn English at school. For most of them, their parents can’t afford after school classes.And some of them really have the ambition to learn English well, because they have astrong will to pass the exams. They believe that knowledge can change their life. But asthey learn, English becomes more and more difficult. The grades on the exam papers arenot as good as they think. Day by day, some of the disadvantaged students becomeconfused in searching ways of learning. Some even lose heart, or give up. As you cansee, it is very urgent for the teachers at our school to find ways to help the students inour school to improve their self-confidence and English ability. Thanks to the newlybrought-in equipment, we feel hopeful. After the big earthquake in the year 2008, withthe help of the government and some warmhearted people around the world, a newteaching device—whiteboard was brought into our school.
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Chapter TwoLiterature Review
2.1 An Over View of Multimedia Teaching
Since the 90's, computer technology has been rapidly developed and the computerhas been popularized. So computer assisted English teaching has been graduallybrought into classroom teaching, especially it is liked by the teachers of English. Itgradually replaced a variety of previous integrated media status. Therefore, themultimedia teaching, which we are now commonly refers to the use of multimediacomputer, is widespread among English teachers due to the help of multimedia teachingsoftware. People also call it the computer assisted instruction, CAI. “Multimediacomputer assisted instruction, MALT, refers to the use of multimedia computer tocomprehensively treat and control symbols, language, text, sound, graphics, video andothermedia information. In the process of multimedia teaching, the teacher puts thevarious factors organically. These elements can be displayed on the screen or projection.It can also play all kinds of sound according to needs.Multimedia technology is verywidely used in teaching, such as animation, hierarchical design, and simulationand testing. Teacher and computer to complete the teaching or training process,the students will not feel tired. (Zhang Juanmiao, 2008:32)".2.2 Theoretical Support
Constructivism is one of the basic theories during the development of themultimedia assistant teaching process. And the theory has become more and moreimportant in education. "Constructivism holds the opinion that the learners learnknowledge in a certain context, maybe a certain social and cultural background. Andwith the help of others and the certain learning materials, they based on their ownexperience to construct knowledge in their special way. Constructivism put emphaseson student-contentedness. Students discover and construct the meaning of knowledge that they have learned (Lou Yongjian, 2009: 42)". They make the new and oldknowledge integration together, which is also the way they learn. The traditionalteacher-centered teaching has been fundamentally changed
