An Empirical Study On Enhancing Vocational College Students’ Environmental Awareness In English Reading Teaching

Environmental education is a very important part of quality-oriented education. Environmental awareness has become an essential part of the moral quality of vocational college students. The researcher holds that it is necessary for vocational college students to enhance environmental awareness in addition to sublime virtue and comprehensive quality. Students’environmental awareness influences their comprehensive quality. With the reformation and development of language teaching, language teachers have increasingly realized that quality-oriented education is of great significance in foreign language teaching. However, analysis of the pre-questionnaire revealed that the current status of vocational college students’environmental awareness was weak in general. That was reflected by the following facts:they often used disposable chopsticks and plastic bags; their awareness of waste recycle was weak; their awareness of responsibility for environment protection was weak; their environment protection acts were not positive. Accordingly, this thesis performed an empirical research on enhancing students’environmental awareness in English reading teachingThe significance of the present research is, through the research on enhancing students’environmental awareness in English reading teaching, to cultivate students’responsibility for environment and to intensify their moral quality of environment, so that they will value the harmonious relationship between human beings and the environment.This thesis focuses on the empirical research on enhancing students’ environmental awareness by adopting supplementary reading material about environmental protection in English reading teaching. On the bases of constructivism and ecocriticism theory, a one-year empirical research in Hunan Food and Drug Vocational College was conducted. The subjects involved in the experiment are80sophomore students majoring in pharmacy from two classes—one is Experiment class and the other is Control Class. Experiment Class adopted supplementary reading material about environmental protection while Control Class adopted reading material about all aspects like sports, culture, economy and etc..Through the experiment, the current study tries to answer the following two questions:1. Can the integration of environmental education into English reading course enhance students’environmental awareness?2. Will integrating environmental education into English reading teaching slow down the improvement of students’reading ability?In order to get the answers to the above mentioned questions, the researcher employed the research instruments:one questionnaire, one reading proficiency pre-test paper, one post-test paper and10questions for the researcher’s interviews with some students from Experiment Class. The questionnaire contained twenty-two items involved in the following three aspects:attitudes towards environment protection, cognition of environmental pollution, and awareness of surrounding environment. In the experiment, the author conducted a pre-questionnaire, a post-questionnaire, a pre-test and a post-test in both Experiment Class and Control Class and several interviews in Experiment Class. The collected data was processed by SPSS13.0. The results were analyzed with quantitative and qualitative methods. The quantitative analyses involved descriptive statistics got from independent samples t-test and paired samples t-test. The qualitative analyses were based on the supplementary information got from interviews. The findings of the study can be summarized as:1. Experiment Class has made substantial improvement in environmental awareness after the teaching experiment, while Control Class hasn’t.2. Both of the classes have made much progress in English reading proficiency. The integration of environmental education into English reading teaching has not slowed down the development of students’ reading ability.Meanwhile, the research hypotheses were proved, namely, the integration of environmental education into reading teaching can enhance the students’environmental awareness and integration of environmental education into English reading teaching will not slow down the development of the students’reading ability.To sum up, this thesis presents an empirical research on integrating environmental education into English reading teaching in a vocational college. The research results demonstrated that environmental education which has been integrated into English reading teaching has been effective to enhance the students’environmental awareness. Moreover, the integration of environmental education into English reading teaching will not slow down the development of the students’reading ability. Therefore, the research has three unique characteristics. Firstly, the experiment on environmental education was carried out in English reading teaching. Secondly, the experiment has verified the feasibility and validity of enhancing students’environmental awareness and improving their reading ability through integrating environmental education into the teaching of English reading. Thirdly, based on the empirical research results, the method and strategies for integrating environmental education into English reaching teaching had been verified to be effective and the pedagogical implications for future teaching were proposed.