An Experimental Study Of Reading Strategy Instruction On College Art Majors

As a main access to language input for English learners, reading is one of the important lingual skills that learners need master. College students are expected to be able to employ effective reading strategies while reading and this is incorporated into the basic requirements for undergraduate college English teaching.As an English teacher who has been teaching college art majors for many years, the author has been seeking an effective way to improve students’ English reading ability. Reading strategy instruction can improve students’ reading ability. A lot of studies and researches have been done in China on common undergraduates of English and non-English majors, but little attention has been paid to college art majors, who are a special group in college. This research is targeted to find out college art majors’ application of reading strategies, explore the effect of the reading strategy instruction on their English reading ability and provide a practicable teaching method for integrating reading strategy instruction into college English reading course.In order to find out the current state of college art majors’ employment of reading strategies, a preliminary questionnaire was conducted among art majors at Wuhan University of Technology. The analysis of data from the questionnaire indicated that the overall use of reading strategies of art majors in this university was not satisfactory. Interviews with some of the art majors and their English teachers showed the college English integrated course was often taught in the traditional grammar translation method with little reading strategy instruction. Therefore, it’s of great significance to integrate the training of reading strategies into college English course.Based on the result of the questionnaire and the interview, the author carried out an experiment to prove that reading strategy instruction can improve students’ reading ability. The research subjects were62students from two equivalent classes of School of Art and Design. Two classes were randomly designated as experimental and controlled class.31students in the experimental class received a13-week reading strategy instruction while the other31students in the controlled class received the regular English course. Both the experimental class and the controlled class took the pre-test and post-test.The scores were statistically analyzed by using SPSS. In addition,12students from the experimental class were interviewed at the end of the experiment to show their attitudes towards the reading strategy instruction.The results of Independent-samples T Test of the pre-test showed no significant difference between the two classes before the experiment, that is, students were equivalent in reading. According to the statistical analysis of the post-test, there was a significant difference between the two groups. The experimental class students’ reading achievements were evidently better than the controlled class students’. Reading strategy instruction did help improve college art majors’English reading ability. And results from interviews indicated that college art majors had positive attitudes towards reading strategy instruction.