A Study on the Practice of English Major Reading Instruction Based on the Production-Oriented Approach

Abstract

In college English major programs, reading courses serve as a crucial channel for students to acquire linguistic knowledge and cultivate academic literacy. However, traditional reading instruction has long focused primarily on input and comprehension, neglecting the effective integration of reading with output. Under the theoretical framework of the Production-Oriented Approach (POA), this study explores practical pathways for integrating POA into English major reading instruction. A semester-long teaching experiment was conducted with two parallel sophomore classes in a Chinese university, incorporating output tasks such as academic summary writing, debate, and text rewriting at the pre-reading, while-reading, and post-reading stages. Data were collected through questionnaires, classroom observations, pre- and post-test comparisons, and student learning journals, and analyzed from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives. The results show that POA not only significantly improved students’ reading comprehension and academic output abilities but also enhanced their critical thinking and classroom engagement. The findings suggest that POA can effectively promote a complete learning chain of “input–processing–output” among English majors, providing new insights and practical references for the reform of college English reading instruction.