A Study of Embodied-Cognitive Teaching Approach to Teach English Reading in College

Abstract

English Reading plays an important role in English learning. Hence, improving the learners' English reading ability is one of the key issues for English teachers in colleges. This study conducts an experiment on teaching English Reading for the freshmen of E-Commerce major in a higher vocational college, in which the experimental group adopts the Embodied-Cognitive Teaching approach and the control group the traditional teaching approach. In order to ensure the reliability of the study, the data of the two groups of learners are obtained and recorded from the teaching platform. With the help of SPSS Statistic analysis software, the study finds that there is no significant difference in the scores of the instant intensive reading test and the instant vocabulary test between the experimental group and the control group. But there is significant difference in the scores of the instant extensive test and after-class vocabulary tests between the two groups; the experimental group performs better than the control group on the aspects of conceptual understanding and word decoding skills, which shows that Embodied-Cognitive teaching approach helps to improve the learners' reading ability and is one of the new and effective ways for teaching English Reading in Chinese colleges.