Domestic English major stagnates when the old-fashioned teaching methods remain. The old-fashioned teaching methods of domestic English major need to be reshaped.

The most common complaint of English major graduates is that how hard they find to get a job related to what they have learned in universities. Yet the interviewers explain that these students themselves leave school without having the capacities of language analytic, critical thinking and organized writing basic. And their weak skills when applied to real tasks at work seems to be less effective and time-consuming. The chance that their accumulating struggle for work would solely lead to one end: quit the job and loathe working any more. At first glance, students are to be blamed for their being underemployed. Take a closer look, though, the problem results from the outdated teaching methods of today’s English major lessons. Compulsory lessons have extensive and intensive reading, writing, listening and speaking, all from basic to advanced. Besides, western culture, Chinese to English and English to Chinese translation, junior interpretation courses are included. Such curriculum looks very proper and various, but the teaching approach- spoon-feed way of teaching or in other words, cramming - inherited from senior high school or even earlier stage of schooling has never changed a bit. Intensive reading lesson, for instance, teachers in classes often highlight the usage of words or phrases, thus breaking the chunk apart. Or they just focus too much on the grammar rules of the passage, which renders the classes as dry and dull as they can be. Ironically, students are painstakingly stuff themselves with every knowledge point that may be tested in the final exam. Worse still, the exams of English major stress on too much memorized knowledge point instead of students’ own opinions on questions. No wonder these “products” made from universities are skilfully vulnerable and are far from satisfying the requirement of the job market. In this case, western universities are supposed to be learned from. The study shows that American kids are reading several times more than those in developing countries. Fair to say, their training under Junior high school is much looser than schooling over it, which emphasizes on kids’ interest in reading and learning. More importantly, that period of schooling has cultivated their reading habit and reading skills as well, which makes it a long-term benefit to kids’ life. These reading-oriented method has so far not only aroused students’ interest in reading, but push them further enough to learn more relevant knowledge of their reading materials such as the background information, the history under the materials, the grammar rules or other related topics etc. And after that, students read more materials to find the answers, learning more background information. . . Such virtuous circle is a process of autonomous learning. And why don’t we make learning more interesting and entertaining for students just like our American counterparts do. The situation of miserable English major graduates urges the education to make a shift. To save the situation, the first step is to take a page from their reading-centered method. For example, English majors should add more reading tasks, especially reading more classic books, to their schedules and do more detailed research under the reading material. It doesn’t mean that teachers can now take a break from lessons, but they are given a more significant task, that is, guiding students to read and to do their reading reports. What’s more, students can take a dive under the reading material and organize some debates about the issues forming along the reading process, which helps to strengthen their capacities of critical thinking. After that, they are welcomed to note down the arguments and finish the reports, which also builds up their writing skills. Finally, students can do a presentation based on their reading reports, which is good to practice their speaking. Therefore, start from one reading material, writing, critical thinking, speaking, multiple skills can be improved. Further more, students can also be allowed to create their own learning materials so as to enhance their abilities of self-teaching. Rome is not made in a day and so the education reform in the university English major may very well make little progress at the very beginning. Yet every little counts, along with the concerted efforts from education department, universities, teachers and students themselves, the situation will change in the end. We will wait and see.