A Research On The Application Of Constructivism In English Reading Teaching For Non-English Majors

English reading teaching is considered as an indispensable part of the whole teaching process, also, it is one of the main means to develop the learners’logical ability and practical problem-solving ability. For non-English majors. English reading seems to be especially difficult:while for many teachers. English reading teaching is not easy, either. With the development of teaching pedagogy, there has been a great progress being made in English teaching. However, there are still some obvious problems exist in current English reading teaching. These problems can generally be summarized in four aspects:first, some teachers focus too much on the explanation on words and grammar, which will prevent the coherence of knowledge:second, some teachers concentrate more on the text knowledge but ignore the learners’ past experience and extracurricular knowledge, thus hindering the learners’meaning-construction process; third, some teachers ignore the cooperative learning which will interfere with the sharing of resource and expanding of thoughts; last but not least, some teachers ignore the great influence which background information has on English reading, and this situation will block learners’ better understanding of the passage. All these problems will be the main obstacles which prevent English reading teaching being effective.Therefore, in order to solve these problems, the author proposes to use Constructivism as the theoretical basis and the author’s one-semester teaching practice as the practical basis so as to get some effective English reading teaching strategies, the author puts forward a research on the application of Constructivism in English reading teaching so as to prove its effectiveness. On the one hand, the author tries to testify the teaching strategies in a Constructivism framework is effective for the learners to improve their reading ability: on the other hand, the author also makes a hypothesis that the improvement of reading ability will also stimulate the improving of other abilities such as listening, vocabulary and structure, translating and writing. During the research. the author adopts the methods of giving questionnaires and carrying out an experiment for a whole semester. As for the research objects, the author chooses the Chinese class1and2as the objects, class1is the experimental class and class2is the controlled class. Before the experiment, the author firstly gives a questionnaire so as to master the basic state of the objects’English learning, then the author asks the objects in both classes to finish the same test (pre-experiment test) so as to compare the result of this test with another same test(post-experiment test). The author applies the Constructivist teaching strategies in the experimental class and traditional teaching methods in the controlled class. After the experiment for a whole semester, the author makes the objects in both classes to do post-experiment test. Then, the author compares the results of two tests and analyzes them.In the first chapter, the author analyzes the importance of English reading. The advantages of a good English reading ability can help the learners to obtain more useful information and knowledge that they need, to enhance their writing ability, to promote their language proficiency and communicative competence and to enlarge their vocabulary. Then the author explained the detail requirements according to College English Curriculum Requirements. At last, the author fixes out some problems of current English reading teaching. In the second chapter, the author thoroughly analyzes Constructivism including its definition, main assumptions, development and main teaching notions. Of all the factors, the main teaching notions of Constructivism is the most important one because they will guide the teaching in the afterwards teaching practice. The main teaching notions are learner-centered principle, emphasis on the context principle, focus on cooperative learning principle and pay special attention to teaching assessment principle. In the third chapter, the author states the whole process of the research and in the last chapter, the author proposed some suggested effective teaching strategies of English reading teaching for non-English majors so as to provide a doable reference for the afterwards English reading teaching for non-English majors. These strategies are applied from the aspects of pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading respectively.