The Approaches to Teaching English Majors Reading in China: A Case Study of the Comprehensive English Course

This paper explores the challenges associated with teaching reading to English majors in China, concentrating on the course designated as "Comprehensive English" or "Intensive Reading". Through historical analysis and critical synthesis, it identifies two significant obstacles in the prevailing teaching approaches. First, a discrepancy is noted between the course's static positioning and the dynamically shifting educational objectives. Second, the prevailing approaches such as TBLT, CBI, and POA are found to be misaligned with the specialized educational needs of English majors, thus requiring modification to align with the academic aspirations of English as a discipline. To address the first challenge, the paper advocates a broader scope for the course, extending beyond mere language skills training to cultivate language proficiency, humanistic literacy, and establishes connections with disciplinary knowledge. For the second challenge, a refined approach is presented, assimilating strengths from both traditional and contemporary approaches, and focusing on critical concepts such as learner autonomy, the flipped classroom model, and Barrett's taxonomy of levels of understanding. This customized approach provides efficacious procedures, aligned with the academic goals of English majors, offering implications for teachers and curriculum designers engaged in English major programs in China.