Constructivism-based College English Reading Teaching

English reading plays an important role in college English teaching. However, currently, theEnglish reading competence of college students in China is relatively in a low level, and thestudents’ interest in English reading is not high. As is known, in the traditional teaching model,the teachers are put in the central position and control the whole class, while the students areonly passive receivers. In the process of teaching, the teachers tend to focus more on thevocabulary, grammar, and language points, resulting in total ignorance of the students’enthusiasm and initiative in study.Till now, there has been no suitable model to teach college English reading, so it is quitenecessary to have a research on the model of college English reading teaching. Therefore, theauthor tries to apply the theory of constructivism to the teaching of English reading to explore agood method.The theory of constructivism emphasizes student-centered learning, collaboration, theimportance of learning context and meaning construction. In constructivist theory, it is believedthat knowledge is not taught by the teachers, but is acquired by the students themselves throughlearning and mutual help(including help from teacher and other students) under certaincircumstances, and by the way of meaning construction. The author proposes aconstructivism-based English reading teaching method on the basis of constructivist theory, andput forward some principles about how to plan an English reading lesson, including a modelreading teaching lesson based on the theory of constructivism. Then, the author carried out anexperiment to access the effect of the constructivist theory on improving the reading competenceof the college students.Two classes are involved in the experiment: the control class and the experiment class.Before and after the experimental period, Tests (a pre-test and a post-test) and a questionnaire areused to gather the data for evaluation the experimental results and discussion. From theevaluation it is found that the constructivism-based English reading teaching method turns out tobe an effective way to enhance the students’ reading abilities and it can be applied to the actualcollege English reading teaching. The author finally got the following points:1) In Englishreading teaching, creating a good learning atmosphere contributes a lot to the promotion ofstudents’ motivation, self–confidence and reading competence.2) Learning is a process of interaction and collaboration, which should be emphasized in reading teaching.3) The teachershould help students construct their own knowledge.