Analysis On College Students' English Reading Beliefs And Improvement In Instructional Design

Educational psychology and learning theory always have great implications for teachingand learning English as a second language. Constructivism, as a new development of cognitivepsychology, emphasizes the importance of what beliefs the learners bring to their learningsituations, especially their personal understandings from their experiences. On the other hand,the idea of "learner's belief is suggested by the theory of metacognitivism. In addition, theresults from the reading psychological research emphasize the interaction between the reader'sknowledge and the reading information. In this way, the learner is brought into central focus,and the research interest is shifted from teaching to learning. Our teaching can be improvedbased on the understanding of the learner's belief. "English Reading Belief means the beliefsthey bring to the English reading process. As for college students, it is a view of what readingis all about, including their personal backgrounds, their reading attitudes, behaviors, values,goals, expectations and motivations, evaluations on themselves as learners and their teacher'sreading instruction, etc. A questionnaire survey recently conducted in several universitiesshows that the factors of different genders, majors, grades and universities respectively affectedthe students' reading beliefs significantly.Through a thorough data analysis, the present paper discusses the results and implications of the survey, in order to improve all the aspects of our instructional design, such as the content, method, strategy and technology of the reading instruction.