【正文】 izes meaningmaking through active participation in socially, culturally, historically, and politically situated contexts. A crucial element of active participation is dialog in shared experiences, through which situated collaborative activities, such as modeling, discourse and decision making, are necessary to support the negotiation and creation of meaning and understanding. (Jy wana, Daphneamp。 Lin Hsiao, 1996) In sum, the contemporary constructivist theory of learning acknowledges that individuals are active agents, they engage in their own knowledge construction by integrating new information into their schema, and by associating and representing it into a meaningful way. Constructivists argue that it is impractical for teachers to make all the current decisions and dump the information to students without involving students in the decision process and assessing students39。 abilities to construct knowledge. In other words, guided instruction is suggested 4 that students are put at the center of learning process, and provided guidance and concrete teaching whenever necessary. Perkins indicates that students may easily get lost in management without any experience to guide them through the information jungle. (Perkins, 1991) This studentcentered guided learning environment is considered, however, more appropriate for illstructured domains or higherlevel learning. (Jy wana, Daphneamp。 Lin Hsiao, 1996) The Affective Filter Hypothesis Krashen sees the learner39。s emotional state or attitudes as an adjustable filter that freely passes, impedes, or blocks input necessary to acquisition. A low affective filter is desirable, since it impedes or blocks less of this necessary input. The hypothesis is built on research in second language acquisition, which has identified three kinds of affective or attitudinal variables related to second language acquisition. (Krashen, 1982) Motivation. (Learners with high motivation generally do better.) Selfconfidence. (Learners with selfconfidence and a good selfimage tend to be more successful.) Anxiety. (Low personal anxiety and low classroom anxiety are more conducive to second language acquisition.) The Affective Filter Hypothesis states that acquirers with a low affective filter seek and receive more input, interact with confidence, and are more receptive to the input they receive. Anxious acquirers have a high affective filter, which prevents acquisition from taking place. It is believed that the affective filter (., fear or embarrassment) rises in early adolescence, and this may account for children39。s apparent superiority to older acquirers of a second language. (Krashen, 1982) Democratic Education Thought Democratic education aims to develop real democracy through active participation by all those involved in classrooms and educational institutions. 5 In democratic education, students have the power to make decisions about their learning, because power is shared rather than appropriated in advance by a minority of people. (Walters, 2020) Its main principles are as follows: Students and teachers share decisionmaking in a democratic selfgovernment The school focuses on the learners and their unique learning styles and strengths, minimizing general pulsory learning Social/emotional development is as important as academic requirements 3 The Design of Humanistic Activities The design of humanistic activities should stick to the following seven principles: a. Accept students as the core of the teaching activities Students are the core of the teaching activities. Teachers’ thinking activities cannot replace students’. They have their own thought. Therefore, when teachers design humanistic activities, they must consider students’ actual level of learning and forms of activities which they can accept. Teachers should design students’ activities selectively in order to motivate their desires of learning, develop their cognitive structure and improve their personalities by humanistic activities. b. Interest Students are lively and energetic. Therefore, they find it difficult to concentrate on studies. Various interesting humanistic activities enable students to motivate their interests of learning and study more effectively. c. Enlightenment The design of humanistic activities must be helpful to improve students’ abilities of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Moreover, it must be beneficial to enlighten students’ mind. For one thing, teachers should design 6 creative, interesting and enlightening topic. For another, teachers should foster students’ confidence and help them to remove obstacles in the activities. d. According to students’ own situation In order to design humanistic activities, teachers must not only understand each student’ s characteristic, learning level, receptive ability and learning attitude but also interest, understanding ability, learning foundation and so on. Humanistic activities must be arranged according to students’ own situation. e. Foster students’ abilities of English application The objective of activities in English class is to foster students’ abilities of English application. When designing humanistic activities, teachers must set meaningful language situations, which enable students to practice English and apply it to the real language munication correctly and timely. f. According to actual teaching conditions The design of humanistic activities must consider a school’ s facilities. Teachers should make full use of modern media, such as recorder, video tape recorder, multimedia classroom and so on. If a school does not have such facilities, teacher can use wall charts and stick figures for English teaching and so on. Moreover, teachers can create various forms of humanistic activities by e