Modeling: Training Of Tuition-free Normal University English Majors In Teaching Strategies For English Reading

In 2007, China’s Ministry of Education started the tuition-free education of normal university students in 6 universities directly under its administration. Ever since then, great importance has been attached to the professional development of tuition-free normal university students. However, although various pedagogical courses have been offered to such students, the training of teaching strategies for more specific language skills is inadequate. Many students are still unclear about what specific strategies should be employed in different courses, under particular circumstances, to achieve desired outcomes. Thus, a training model called Modeling was proposed and implemented in an experiment to examine the effect of training such students in teaching strategies for English reading.In the week before the experiment, a questionnaire-based pre-survey was made on tuition-free normal university students’familiarity with the teaching strategies for English reading. The survey takers were from 2 third-year classes of the English Education Department at the School of Foreign Languages in Southwest University. Based on the survey result,20 students were selected from each class as the subjects for the experimental group and the control group. While the experimental group took extracurricular training of teaching strategies for English reading based on the proposed model called Modeling, the control group did not. The experiment lasted for about 5 weeks. In the last week, immediately following the experiment, the 40 subjects took a post-survey based on the same questionnaire used in the pre-survey.It was found that the trainees’familiarity with teaching strategies for English reading was effectively enhanced through the training procedure of Modeling. The results have theoretical and practical significance. Theoretically, it was evidenced that the proposed training model called Modeling works well in training tuition-free normal university students in teaching strategies. Practically, the efficiency of Modeling suggests that courses training teaching strategies should be offered to tuition-free normal university English majors. In addition, the model also implies that both in-service teachers and teachers-to-be should strengthen their own familiarity with teaching strategies in their spare time.