An Experimental Study On Constructivism-Based Reading Teaching Of English Majors In Secondary Normal Schools

English reading teaching plays an important part in English teaching.In our country,great progress has been made through many years' exploration and practice,however,English majors in secondary normal schools are still quite low in both reading level,and autonomous reading ability.In teaching,traditional model is usually applied,the teacher is usually the teaching center who controls the whole class,while the students just receive passively.In the process of teaching,the teacher tends to focus more on vocabulary,grammar,and language points,neglecting the improvement of the students' reading level and their autonomous reading ability,which leads to the students' reading problems.Constructivism focuses on student-centered learning and collaboration.It believes that knowledge is not taught by the teacher,but acquired by the students themselves through learning and interactive help(including help from the teacher and other students)under certain circumstances,and by means of meaning construction.Basing on the theory of constructivism and the students' real reading level and autonomous reading ability,the researcher proposes a constructivism-based English reading teaching of English majors in secondary normal schools.The researcher intends to explore the effect of constructivism-based reading teaching of English majors in secondary normal schools.There are two research questions in it:1)Can constructivism-based reading teaching improve secondary normal school students' reading level?2)Can constructivism-based reading teaching improve secondary normal school students' autonomous reading ability?In order to do this research,the researcher made an experiment of 18 weeks in reading teaching on English majors in Grade One of Tangshan Teachers College Yutian Branch(secondary normal school in nature).Between the two classes that the researcher taught,Class 3 was selected as the experimental class,while Class 4 was selected as the control class at random.Before the experiment,the researcher gave the participants pre-test,pre-questionnaire,and pre-interview.In the experiment,constructivism-based reading teaching was applied in the experimental class,while the traditional PPP reading teaching was used in the control class.When the experiment was finished,all of the participants were given a post-test,a post-questionnaire,whose data were analyzed by SPSS17.0,and a post-interview,the data and the result of the interview were used in comparison of the reading level and the autonomous reading abilities between the two classes.The major findings of the experiment indicate that constructivism-based reading teaching can improve both the reading level and autonomous reading ability of the English majors in secondary normal schools effectively.So it is feasible.