On Task-based Approach In English Reading Classes

Task-based approach (TBA) has become a heated topic in L2 acquisition and EFL teaching. It is an important language-teaching mode that is based on lots of research and practice by the foreign language teaching researchers. In the past 20 years and over, many experts in applied linguistics not only do research into task-based approach in theory but also explore it in practice. A lot of volumes of literatures have come into being thanks to their contribution to this field of linguistics. But in EFL teaching in middle schools, many teachers do not know much about it due to the lack of special training; they are still employing the traditional way of teaching in reading class, which does not benefit the students and is not in agreement with the New English Curriculum Standards. Therefore, the author reckons that it is of great importance to elaborate on task-based approach to make sure that more English teachers know about it and integrate it into their English teaching.At the very beginning of the thesis, the author lists different definitions of "task" and presents her own viewpoints, and then studies the theoretical foundation of TBA, its guiding principles, task selection and so on to help teachers in the middle school have a good understanding of this approach. After that, the paper makes an analysis of the experiment and designs a questionnaire to have feedback of the using TBA in reading class. The emphasis of this paper is on the implementation of TBA in reading class in Senior One. The author lists six kinds of tasks and gives some examples, hoping to give some guidance to the teachers in the middle school. Finally, the author gives some suggestions of implementing TBA and proposed the future research direction.