The Application Of Task-based Language Teaching To English Reading Class In High School

Nowadays, with the rapid development of economy and society, it is important to get more information quickly. One of the best ways of getting information is reading. Only if one's ability of reading is improved, does he have a firm foundation for his further study. So to promote the students reading comprehension ability is one of the most important goals of English teaching. For many years, teachers have relied on language lessons, directing students to repeat and practice English sounds, words and structures, or calling on them to answer questions and thereby display what they learned through instruction. Such approaches taken by teachers and researchers, however, may not be the most suitable means of teaching and helping with students. The new English curriculum advocates the task based language learning.Task-based Approach is a meaning-focused teaching method, aiming at fulfilling language communicative tasks. It is based on Language Acquisition Theory,Constructivism,Psycholinguistics and on the learner-centered ideas , instead of being based on teacher-centered ideas. In senior English teaching,it requires learners to actively participate in real communication activities,to actively accomplish tasks by using target language,to develop language knowledge as well as competence.Will the application of the task-based language teaching to the senior English reading class be more efficient than the traditional teaching method? Will task–based language teaching can promote their reading strategies as well as improve their attitudes to reading class? The purpose of this thesis is to answer these questions by doing experiment between an experimental class and a controlled class for a whole term. The students in the experiment class were taken task-based language teaching method, while the controlled class was taken the traditional teaching method. The results were collected and analyzed by SPSS.The results of the test show: the task-based language teaching can improve the students'reading ability, promote their reading strategies as well as improve their attitudes to reading class.