Application Of ESA Teaching Model To English Reading Teaching In Vocational College

English reading is an important way of getting information and understanding westernculture as well as consolidating and enlarging English language points. Therefore, readingteaching has always been an important part of English teaching in all forms of school educationat all levels, including vocational colleges. Vocational English teachers have made greatconsistent efforts on how to improve students’ reading proficiency and enhance their interests inEnglish reading. Nevertheless, nowadays, English teaching in vocational college keeps thetraditional teaching model universally, which is characterized by considering impartingknowledge as the main task of English class, and it is the teacher that always keeps talking. Thus,it seriously restrains the students’ interests in learning English, let alone improving their Englishreading proficiency.In1990s, Jeremy Harmer, the internationally famous expert in English teaching, proposedESA teaching model on the basis of PPP teaching model, injecting new energy into the reform ofthe English teaching model. The main contents of this theory are as follows: there must be threeelements in class no matter what contents are taught and they are Engage, Study and Activate,which can be combined and applied flexibly, generating three different types of lessons—Straight Arrows sequence, Boomerang sequence and Patchwork sequence. The modelemphasizes that the students are the principal part of the teaching activity and all teachingactivities have to take the students’ actual level, acceptable ability and interests into account. Themodel also puts an importance on the change of teachers’ role, indicating that the role of theteacher is more flexible and he or she is no longer the ruler of the teaching process but the guiderof students’ study and the organizer and coordinator of the classroom activities. Besides, theteacher uses ESA teaching model to provide the students with good mechanism, enough roomand relaxing environment to get the students do activities initiatively, which makes therelationship between the teacher and the students, between teaching and learning moreharmonious.This thesis just probed into the effect of ESA teaching model on English reading teaching invocational college, based on the overview of the related theories and researches of ESA teaching model. Two research questions are to be addressed:1. Whether ESA teaching model can improvevocational college students’ English reading proficiency;2. Whether ESA teaching model isbeneficial to improving vocational college students’ interests in English reading. The study is anempirical research and the teaching experiment consisting of18weeks was carried out inShandong Vocational Technology College in the first half of2012. The subjects of theexperiment were the students from two parallel classes of this college, majoring in accounting.One is the experimental class, adopting ESA teaching model and the other is control class,adopting the traditional teaching model. Such instruments as Students’ Interests in EnglishReading Questionnaire and Students’ Opinions of ESA Teaching Model Questionnaire, pre-test,post-test and follow-up interviews were adopted in the whole process of the experiment. And thedata collected from the experiment were carefully analyzed by SPSS13.0and Excel2003. Theconclusion was made on the basis of quantitative research method, combining with qualitativeresearch method.The research results show that: ESA teaching model does have remarkable positive effectson improving the English reading proficiency of the students in vocational college, and it alsohas a certain positive influence on enhancing the students’ interests in English reading. So it canbe concluded that ESA teaching model is a feasible and effective teaching model which can bebrought into English teaching in vocational colleges to change the current situation of Englishreading teaching, and this thesis also discussed the pedagogical implications and significances ofthis research at the end. However, due to some restrictions of real conditions, there are still somelimitations and difficulties that can not be neglected in the process of applying ESA teachingmodel to teach English reading. The research remains to be explored and improved by otherresearchers.