A Study On Project-based Learning In College English Reading Teaching

With the in-depth development of economic globalization,different industries have higher and higher requirements for English in different areas.Reading ability is one of the four basic abilities to measure English.It attracts the attention of most foreign language learners and educators.However,in today's college English reading teaching,the traditional teaching method still occupies most of the class.The main ideas are: Teacher is the center of the class,they focus on interpreting and instilling language points and grammar.Learners are treated as passive receivers.As a result,most of the students,especially those non-English majors,show little interest in reading,and thus have a poor reading ability.Therefore,the reform of traditional teaching methods is imminent.Project-based Learning(PBL for short)first originated in the medical field and was gradually widely used in social sciences,especially student education.Compared with traditional teaching methods,the core idea of PBL lies in that,it takes project research as the orientation,learners as the center of the class,group discussion as the main organizational form.Its fundamental purpose is to cultivate students' quality and learning abilities.Studies at home and abroad show that this teaching method satisfies the current new social requirements and demands for personnel training.Based on the in-depth research of the application of PBL in English teaching both at home and abroad and combine the current situation and problems of college English reading teaching in our country.The author conducts a one-semester project empirical study in college English reading class--New Horizon College English Reading and Speaking Course 3 as an example and initially explored an empirical study in this field.The framework of this study is as follows: This study selects 82 non-English majors from Northwest Normal University as experimental classes(40 students)and control classes(42 students)respectively.And conducts a one-semester experimental comparative study.The two classes are taught by the researchers herself.The experimental class used the project-based teaching method and the control class used the traditional teaching method.This paper attempts to answer the following two research questions:1.Compared with the traditional teaching methods,is the PBL teaching method more effective in improving students' reading interest,stimulating students' motivation and promoting students' use of diverse reading strategies?2.Compared with the traditional teaching methods,is the PBL teaching method more effective in improving students' English reading proficiency?After one semester's teaching experiment,the results of the questionnaire,pretest,post-test and interview are analyzed scientifically by SPSS 24.0.The results show that,compared with the traditional teaching methods,the PBL teaching method can improve students' reading interest more effectively,stimulate students' motivation to learn,promote students' flexible use of reading strategies and thus enhance students' reading proficiency more effectively.These findings provide useful references for the current college English reading teaching reform.However,due to the existence of certain limitations and deficiencies in this study,it is hoped that other researchers will conduct more in-depth discussions and research in the future with a large range of research objects and a longer research span.