A Study On The Reading Difficulties Of Art Major Undergraduates

Reading is an important input channel for English learners, to a large extent the situation of reading teaching can determine whether English teaching is a success or failure. Nowadays many Chinese university students encounter difficulties of different scopes and kinds. In English reading, these difficulties have an impact on improving of learners’ reading level and also affect English language teaching. Therefore, this study on art major undergraduates’ reading difficulties means a lot to English language teaching and learning.This study uses both quantitative and qualitative studies to investigate the art major sophomores from three universities in Guilin. The questionnaire is divided into six dimensions, each dimension stands for a factor that could cause reading difficulties. And the questionnaires were given out to art major undergraduates from Guangxi Normal University, Lijiang College of Guangxi Normal University and Guilin University of Technology, attempting to answer the following questions:(1) What are the English reading difficulties encountered by the art major students? (2) What factors contribute to their reading difficulties? (3) What is their biggest reading difficulty? And how to deal with it? (4) what are their suggestions and expectations for improving English reading class? The author analyzes the 149 valid questionnaires with SPSS 18.0 and finds that, for art major undergraduates, the greatest reading difficulty is caused by the lack of critical thinking ability. The second greatest reading difficulty is lack of English background knowledge. The other difficulties are poor language ability, negative English reading attitude, inability to use reading strategies to understand text and lack of reading motivations.From the results of the interview which was conducted after the questionnaire survey, it can be found out that most art major undergraduates have a weak basis of English, and they do not like English reading. They suggest their teacher spend more class time in explaining vocabulary, grammar and sentence structure. They also suggest their teacher use more mother language in English teaching.According to the analysis of questionnaire and interview data, the author proposes suggestions for art major undergraduates, teachers and educational institutes. Suggestions for students are as follows:to think more while reading; to improve English learning methods and enlarge input; to learn more reading strategies and have a positive attitude.In the end the author makes a conclusion for this study, and points out the limitations of the study and proposes some suggestions for future researchers.