Abstract:

Academic English reading ability is one of the fundamental abilities of agricultural science and technology personnel in order to obtain information. It is a strategic issue for the development of agricultural science and technology in China, and it is also the primary requirement for agricultural graduate students. In order to further improve the quality and efficiency of academic English reading course for agricultural graduate students, this study proposes a teaching model with the “sociocultural theory” as the guidance, with the “genre teaching method” as the curriculum organization framework and with the “reading circle” cooperative learning as the classroom teaching method. The teaching model is applied to the academic English reading course for master students. The results show that students’ competency is improved significantly in speed and comprehension of English abstract reading. The teaching framework can not only help students gain genre awareness of academic English reading, improve their speed and ability to obtain information in English, but also construct their identity and cognition in academic community. It is one of the feasible plans to teach academic English reading.

Key words: academic English, agricultural academic English reading, teaching framework, genre teaching method, reading circle, course setting, teaching mode