In recent years, the overemphasis on language training and the overlook of liberal education in English teaching arouse a shared concern among English scholars. Correspondingly, a new reform is initiated, which calls for returning English to its place as a discipline of humanities, and recognizes the promotion of critical thinking and cultivation of humanistic qualities as its major orientations. However, strengthening liberal education and enhancing language skills are not mutually exclusive in the discipline of English, which, in contrast, should be synthesized. Based on the teaching reform carried out amid English major in Shanghai International Studies University, this paper elaborates on some teaching cases in the course of Comprehensive English for freshmen, which illustrates the idea as well as the practical methods of combining the detailed analysis of text adopted in traditional intensive reading with the thematic comprehension and appreciation practiced in traditional extensive reading.