A Study On Task-based English Writing In High Schools

Writing, as an important way of output, plays an indispensable role in language communication. For senior middle school students, writing, which is one of the "four basic skills " they must possess, takes an important part in English learning both in their language development and academic success.Compared with other language skills, writing is more difficult to improve but the fact is that it has been overlooked for a long time. Nevertheless, difficulties such as large class size, limited class time and limited chances for practicing the use of the language, public examination pressure and many other factors tend to create obstacles for students to learn English writing effectively. As a result, Students' writing ability and their positive attitude in using the language can be hardly built up."Task-based approach" to language learning, studied from 1970', is one of the most effective and meaningful language teaching approaches studied in recent years. The present study adopted Task-based approach, which provides learners with favorable learning environment, adequate time and opportunities for learning the language, motivates students and gives them the confidence to learn.In this experimental study on the effectiveness of task-based approach, the author aimed to answer these two questions:(1). Is task-based language teaching more effective in promoting Chinese EFL students' writing proficiency than the 3-Ps approach?(2). Is task-based language teaching more effective in training learners' writing behaviors and improving their positive language learning attitudes than the 3-Ps approach?There are mainly seven parts in this thesis.The first part is an introduction, which states the purpose and significance of this study;The second part is literature review, which reviews the theories concerning task and task-based instruction, the English writing approaches also included;The third part is about rationales for task-based language teaching;The fourth and fifth parts deal with the experimental study and data analysis, which is the most important part in the research.The design of the research was based on a task-based pedagogy, lasted for one semester and involved 84 senior one students of Hua Shi Middle school in Jiang Yin. In the study, the control group receives traditional 3-Ps approach while the same teacher teaches the experimental group in task-based approach. After twenty weeks of different treatments, appeared the results which were based on the data collection before and at the end of the second term in the academic year 2005-2006. As an addition to the task-based writing test, an interview is designed to investigate students' attitude and reaction to the teaching method they received. Then SPSS11.5 was used to analyze all collected data to investigate the effect of a task-based writing program on middle school students.In the next part, the results and discussion indicate that task-based writing training has had a considerably significant effect on the subjects' English writing proficiency in terms of content organization, Language usage and the third aspect: punctuation, spelling and handwriting, and that the program is able to significantly enhance the subjects' English learning motivations.Finally, some limitations involved in this study are pointed out and some suggestions for further research are put forward.