The objectives are to solve many problems in traditional English reading teaching, such as the passive acceptance of students’ learning situation, the rigid teaching mode of teachers and the difficulty in taking into account the individual needs of each student, and the forced averaging of students’ English learning ability and level. Firstly, a detection method of English reading level based on the Backpropagation neural network (BPNN) is designed. Secondly, the teaching process and specific teaching plan are designed with the Production Oriented Approach (POA). Finally, the detection method of English reading level is verified by simulation experiments, and the effect of the teaching method integrating POA is analyzed. The results show that (1) when the learning rate is 0.26 and the training time is 1000 times, the mean square error (MSE) of the model is the smallest. (2) The results of the practical experiment indicate that the number of people who sign up for the college English proficiency test, the number of actual exams, and the pass rate of the test in the experimental group using the teaching method are higher than those in the control group. Moreover, the number of people in the experimental group increased more than that in the control group after the experiment. There is no significant difference in the test results of the two groups before the experiment, and the average test scores of the experimental group are obviously higher than those of the control group after the experiment. The
p
value of the two groups of results is less than 0.05 in the t-test, indicating that there is a significant difference in the English reading level between the two groups after the experiment. Simultaneously, the difference between the results of class A before and after the experiment is larger than that of class B, showing that the teaching method integrating POA is more effective for students with higher English levels. Therefore, compared with the traditional teaching method, the teaching mode integrating POA is more effective in improving the English reading level of college students. It aims to transform POA theory into practice and provide a great reference for college English reading teaching.