Raising Writing Level Of High School Students With Task-based Approach

English writing is one of the four main language skills. As one of the outputs of the students, it is the most difficult skill to learn for the students, and it is also very difficult to teach for the teachers because of tight schedules in high schools. Furthermore, most teaching of writing is based on product approach, which focuses too much on the final product of the students and therefore has its limitations in improving students’writing level.Since task-based approach became popular in western countries in1980s, it has been introduced, advocated, and researched in China. A lot of experimental researches and theoretical analyses have been carried out. Language teachers in different educational levels put task-based approach into teaching practice, and at the same time they design experiments to research in its application. However, most of the researches are related to listening and reading, especially in college English teaching. Experimental researches on writing of high school students are only a few. Application of task-based approach has its advantages because it combines merits of both product approach and process approach and overcomes their demerits. With task-based approach, students improve their language ability and pay attention to meaning of language in different stages of finishing tasks or activities. Therefore, it is interesting for the author to carry out a study on implication of task-based approach in high school writing class.This paper has six chapters. Chapter one is background information, significance, and structure of the paper. Chapter two and Chapter three review literature on task-based approach and writing separately. Chapter four introduces experiment. A12-week experimental study was conducted in Shaanxi Chenggu No.2high school. Two parallel classes were chosen as a control class and an experimental class. They have the same teacher, the same tests, and the same class length but different writing teaching approaches. In the former class, all the students were taught by traditional product approach once a week while in the latter class students were taught by task-based approach. Students in these two classes had the same questionnaires and writing tests before and after the study. The questionnaires and writing tests show that students in experimental class improved their writing more and had more interest in writing than those in the control class. Chapter five collects and analyzes data. Chapter six concludes findings, implications, and limitations of the study.