General education contributes to the intellectual foundation of college students, nevertheless, many students only focus on their major courses and lack motivation in taking these fundamental courses. Teaching natural sciences in general education is a big challenge on Soochow campus where the students mostly major arts, literatures, social sciences and languages. This article reports on the improvement of teaching environment-centered “Introductory Life Sciences” with some group activities. By observations, interviews, questionnaires and other methods, the student groups finished their team-work reports on the following topics associated with the operation of shrimp-fishing ponds in Waishuanghsi region: 1. environment of the community around these shrimp-fishing ponds, 2. the shrimps and fishes in these ponds and in the Waishuanghsi River, 3. environment and operation of each of the shrimp-fishing ponds, 4. cognition of the customers and college students about these fishing ponds, 5.shrimp-fishing ponds in other regions. Teaching was also accompanied with classroom/online discussions, environment and ecological knowledge contests, online learning portfolio, and a visit to Waishuanghsi region. Judging from the quality of the student reports and teaching evaluations by the students, measures adopted in this study significantly increased the self-learning motivation, knowledge of Waishuanghsi and team-work capability of the students.