Skills-Based Teaching Of Reading In College English Classroom

Nowadays, although heated discussions on how reading should be taught have beenmade for a few decades, the current situation of reading instruction is still not encouragingin college English classroom. This study investigated and compared the differences betweentwo teaching approaches applied into the college English classroom: the skills-basedapproach and the topic-based approach. Participants completed a pretest and a posttest, andthe data were then analyzed and compared. Meanwhile, sixteen interviews were conductedto further analyze those students’ attitudes towards the two kinds of teaching approaches.All the data and responses were then analyzed regarding:1) Is skills-based approach moreeffective in improving learners’ reading ability?2) Is skills-based approach better inimproving learners’critical reading ability?It was found that students in experimental group who received skills-based languageinstruction scored higher on the Standardized Reading Comprehension Tests than those ofcontrol group instructed with a topic-based approach. At the same time, both groups madeprogress in reading ability from pretest to posttest, but only students in experimental groupimproved significantly in critical reading ability after the teaching experiment. Theinterviews showed that students instructed with skills-based approach felt more interested inEnglish reading learning and improved a lot both in reading ability and other languageabilities.The study sustained the following conclusions:1) Skills-based approach is moreeffective in improving learners’ reading ability;2) Skills-based approach is better inimproving learners’critical reading ability.