Application Of Task-Based Approach To English Reading Teaching In Rural Senior School

Reading is an important part in the process of English learning. The National English Curriculum pointed out that the main purpose of English reading is to cultivate students’ reading strategies and language sense and especially to train students’ability to obtain information and to deal with information in the reading process. Reading is one of the major channels in obtaining information. It plays a dominant role in the process of language learning. What is more, it is one of the main items in the college entrance examination, since it makes up a large proportion of the academic achievement. However, the students’reading competence hasn’t reached the level required by the teaching syllabus, especially in the rural students’ reading situation. As a result, it is very difficult to mobilize the students’ initiative spirit and enthusiasm in English reading class. Thus, the efficiency is low.The National English Curriculum issued by The Ministry of Education advocates task-based teaching and learning, which gives a lot of time to the students and makes students learn actively with"mission". In addition, it gives full play to the learner’s own cognitive ability, and it helps change the students’ passive learning into active exploration. But how to apply this teaching model to English reading teaching, especially to rural senior school English reading teaching, is a theme worthy of exploring.In order to carry out the English teaching reform advocated by the National English Curriculum, this paper intends to make an exploration on the following:(1) Can the task-based language teaching help to improve the senior high students English reading ability?(2) Can the students’ interest in English reading be stimulated by their implementing the learning tasks in the process of applying the task-based language teaching to classroom English reading teaching?The main purpose of this study is to explore the effectiveness and practicality of the task-based approach to English reading teaching in rural senior school. The author attempts to prove the facts that task-based language teaching is an effective teaching method that can help improve the senior students’ English reading competence and stimulate their interest in English reading. In this thesis, the author makes a survey in her school in order to find out the problems in English reading teaching, and then carry out the classroom experiment by using task-based language teaching in her own English reading class.The author carried out the experiment in two parallel classes of Grade One. The school is XinDianZi Senior School, which is a rural senior school in Zunhua. There are138students in two classes. One class is an experimental class with70students and the other is a control class with68students. Task-based approach is used in the experimental class but traditional teaching approach in the control class. The time of the experiment is from September of2011to January of2012. The experimental results show that the average score of the experimental class is even higher than that of the control class. The students in experimental class implement the reading tasks actively and successfully in class and out of class they do more reading positively and independently. Therefore, TBLT has been proved a practical and effective method to the Chinese learners in rural areas. It is not only beneficial to improve the rural students’ reading level but it also provides some reference for English reading teaching reform in rural senior school.