A Survey Of University Teachers’ Beliefs And Reading-teaching Practice

In recent years, with the further development of researches in the area of foreign language teaching and teachers’ cognition, studies on ESL teachers’ beliefs have gradually become the focus of scholars at home and abroad. As the driving force of teachers’ practice and teaching behavior, teachers’ beliefs have an important impact on the actual effect of classroom teaching. College English reading teaching is an important part of English teaching, and it is also an effective way to help students learn English language knowledge and improve their comprehensive ability of language. Studies on college English teachers’ reading teaching beliefs and practice are not rich enough. Therefore, the current study was hoped to help college English teachers to have fully understand about their reading teaching beliefs and practice, to make clear how teaching beliefs influence on their teaching practice, and to improve their teaching methods and teaching effect.This study tries to address these following questions:(1) What reading teaching beliefs do the ESL teachers hold in college?(2) What relationships exist between college ESL teachers’ beliefs and practices in reading teaching? The quantitative and qualitative studies are adopted in this study. First, 100 questionnaires were administered to ESL teachers from two universities in Chang Chun, Jilin Province,one college from Dandong, Liaoning Province. Then, three of them were chosen to have the semi-structured interview and classroom observation. The quantitative data from the questionnaires were analyzed with SPSS18.0 and the qualitative data from the interviews and classroom observations were analyzed by thematic analysis. The quantitative and qualitative data are interpreted, validated and supplemented.On the general, the participating college ESL teachers have systematic and mature reading teaching beliefs. They give priority to the contents of textbooks, andapply common style articles and professional literature thesis to be supplementary materials. Their purposes of English reading teaching is diverse, but they mainly pay attention to the cultivation of students’ reading skills, improve their understanding ability and expand their knowledge, so as to form a long-term habit of reading. In addition, they emphasize the importance of English language knowledge such as vocabulary and grammar. In their mind, they fully affirmed the importance of reading strategies on improving students’ reading ability and level.Furthermore, the current study found those college ESL teachers’ reading teaching beliefs and their classroom practice have a certain consistency. Their teaching beliefs can guide the teaching practice, classroom decision-making and teaching methods, so their classroom practice reflect their teaching beliefs. Through classroom practice, they will constantly revise and perfect teaching beliefs. There are some mutual influences between the two. Besides, the study also found that college ESL teachers are influenced by the teaching environment, so they can not completely and fully practice their teaching beliefs, which led to the significant differences between their reading teaching beliefs and practice.