A Study Of The Application Of Associative Approach To College English Reading Teaching

The author makes a tentative study of the methods of improving college students'reading proficiency from the perspective of associative approach, which is a kind of creative approach that establishes connections between different things or different concepts by means of imagination, thus brings out creative imagination. It is assumed that the adoption of this approach will arouse students'interest in English, enlarge their scope of background knowledge, and help them develop their creativity.Association has been studied by many foreign psychologists since the seventeenth century. Many educators have tried to apply associational psychology to education, mainly to the education of creativity. Associative approach is gaining its recognition and status because of its special functions and efficiency. Though many teachers have begun to apply it to college English teaching, it is mainly applied to the teaching of vocabulary and culture, and there are few comprehensive studies on its application in the whole process of College English Reading teaching.The purpose of the study is to explore the implication of associative approach and its application to College English Reading teaching. According to the survey of the status quo of the application of associative approach to College English Reading teaching, various methods of applying it in the whole process of reading teaching are presented, and as a result, different kinds of associations can be used alternatively, actively and skillfully to achieve the goals of reading teaching.An experiment is carried out to testify the efficiency of those suggested methods. The author carries out a sixteen-week teaching program based on associative approach among eighty-two non-English majors, with forty-one students in both the control class and the experimental class. Associative approach is applied in the experimental class. During the experiment, personal interviews with the students and classroom observation are conducted. At the end of the experiment, a questionnaire for students in the experimental class is conducted and a test is given to testify the students'...