An Action Research On The Aesthetic Teaching In College English Reading Course

Aesthetic education is crucial for reaching an all-round development requirement of a student and it is considered to play an important role in the improvement of students’ comprehensive quality. Based on College English Curriculum Requirements(2004), aesthetic teaching is an organic element of college English teaching. Nevertheless, the exploration in aesthetic teaching in college English teaching is limited and does not have many satisfactory results. Therefore, the present study focuses on the influence of aesthetic teaching on the improvement of students’ reading proficiency and aesthetic ability, with the goal of motivating college students’ interest in English learning and contributing enlightenment to college English reading teaching. I try to answer two research questions: 1) Could students’ reading competence and aesthetic gains be improved throughout the process? If yes, in what aspects? If not, what are the possible reasons? 2) Does the aesthetic English reading teaching motivate students’ English learning? If yes, in what ways? If not, why?Both qualitative and quantitative study are used in my action research. Respectively, the qualitative data were collected from interviews, and teaching logs. The pre-test and post-test were conducted as quantitative study among the 34 college students who major in animation in my English reading class. Based on Qiu’s(2003) aesthetic English teaching model, my action research on practice of aesthetic English reading teaching method was carried out for 15 weeks in one semester. It focused on studying and investigating students’ learning motivation, and improvement of reading proficiency and aesthetic gains during the period.The major findings are 1) Students’ reading competence was improved in terms of appreciating aesthetic elements, and creating linguistic beauty; 2) Their English learning was motivated in different ways. Two implications of the paper include: 1) There are different methods for English teachers to combine aesthetic teaching with emotional education. Multiple ways can provide more opportunities for students to create beauty in English learning; 2) Some methods can be used to promote English teachers’ ability to practice their classroom teaching as an art and more suitable teaching methods could be explored and introduced to the teachers.