A Study On The Application Of Problem-based Learning (PBL) In College English Reading

As the era of information and globalization trend continues to develop, the way peoplelive and learn has undergone deep changes. Developing new talents with innovative spirit andpractical abilities as well as lifelong learning skills has become the re-orientation of talentscultivation method in colleges and universities. In the field of foreign language teaching,reading ability development is usually a top priority among a variety of skills, especially incollege English teaching. In today’s college English reading, traditional teaching methods stilldominate most of the classroom. This always entails poor results, and learners’ comprehensiveability is low, which have to be improved and amended.Problem-based Learning, hereinafter referred to as PBL, is applied in the medical field,in recent years; it is widely used in the field of education. It is a learner-centered teachingmethod, which helps learners to develop problem-solving skills through joint problem solvingactivities conducted by learners groups. It is a creative teaching method that meets the currenttalents cultivating requirements. More and more theoretical researches on PBL at home andabroad are published, but the application of PBL in the college English reading teaching israre. In the thesis, guided by PBL, two non-English-majored parallel classes with learners arechosen as experimental class and controlled class respectively. A semester long contrastiveexperiment is conducted, during which the experimental class was given PBL readingteaching method, while the controlled class was guided by traditional teaching method. In theresearch, a thematic unit in the college English reading course was taken as an example, andmethods like questionnaires, pretest, posttest, interview and other ways are applied to supportthe experiment. The data collected in the research was then processed through SPSS dataanalysis software in order to present more reliable results. By doing all this, we aim to explorea more effective approach to college English reading teaching.It is proved that the method has a positive effect on cultivating and improving learners’reading skills and reading comprehension ability and improving learners’ cultural recognitionand cultivating autonomous learning ability, creative thinking skills, peer collaboration and soon. It provides theoretical and practical references for institutions of higher learning in termsof college English reading teaching. However, there are many shortcomings of this study, andwe sincerely hope that the study will play the role of catalyst and attract more scholars andteachers to conduct a more in-depth study and research.