Application of the Interactive Approach to the Teaching of English Reading in College

Based on the careful analysis of the reading process and the thorough comparison of the three approaches to reading (the bottom-up approach, the top-down approach and the interactive approach), this paper focuses on the interactive approach to teaching English reading in college. It suggests that during the reading process, the focus should be put both on decoding the meaning of the text and on activating the systemic and schematic knowledge, with the bottom-up and the top-down strategies functioning interactively to improve the students' reading ability and cultivate critical reading and thinking in them. Several practical ways are also suggested to help the students improve reading comprehension.