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uman knowledge can hardly be understood fully without being studied in connection to that of experience and reasoning. For the purpose of achieving a better understanding of research, the role of experience and reasoning will be considered before that of research.

2.1 Experience

Experience is a kind of development of personal knowledge of the world. It is regarded as an individually accumulated body of knowledge (Cohen and Manion 1). In a problem-solving situation, people tend to resort to personal experience first. However, where solutions to problems clearly lie beyond this body of personal experience, it is often helpless to resort to personal experience.

In the case of foreign language learning, the learner’s native language often interferes with or facilitates the learning of the target language. This can be considered as a clear indication of the learner’s reliance on the personal experience in his or her first language. It is arguable that the personal experience is by no means reliable although it is sometimes helpful because it cannot guarantee smooth progress and success in foreign language learning.

As for English language teaching, our experience of English examinations can be resorted to when we help our students prepare for the college entrance examination of English. However, it is difficult for us to resort to our previous personal experience when we are facing the problem of how to motivate middle school students in communicative language teaching as many of them can hardly see any chance to communicate directly with native speakers of English.

2.2 Reasoning

Reasoning is the act of forming conclusions, judgements or inferences by thinking in a logical manner. There are two basic types of reasoning: one is inductive reasoning and the other is deductive reasoning.

Inductive reasoning begins with observations and evidence of empirical regularities or empirical relationships (Howard 8). This is a mental process from a number of specific cases to a general idea underlying them. When a learner of English comes across expressions such as “three books”, “many ships”, “two minutes”, he or she may form a hypothesis that “-s” is used to indicate the idea of “two or more”. It is not difficult to see that inductive reasoning in foreign language learning often leads to hypothesis formation.

Deductive reasoning begins with basic beliefs, theories, assumptions, propositions, and so on, the validity of which is assumed and untested (Howard 8). This is a mental activity from a general idea to specific cases. In foreign language learning, if we learn a grammatical rule or a word-formation rule first, then we apply it to make a sentence or to coin a new word. For example, according to the English word-formation rule that the prefix “un-” and an adjective may combine to form another adjective with negative or opposite force in it: “un-” and “happy” go together to form “unhappy” with the meaning of “not happy”.

There is an obvious limitation in reasoning as an activity. According to Cohen and Manion, “it [reasoning] was no longer related to observation and experience and became merely a mental exercise” (3). That is 本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。