A Study Of The Application Of Task-based Language Teaching In English Reading Teaching In Rural Junior Middle School

In2001, the New English Curriculum Standard was issued by the State Ministry of Education in China which explicitly stated that task-based language teaching should be advocated and applied in English teaching in junior middle schools and recommended that teachers should avoid using the simple teaching methods of only teaching the fixed language knowledge from the textbooks, and try to adopt the method of task-based language teaching. The students will be able to fulfill the goals of the tasks and feel success by means of experiencing, participating, interacting, practicing and cooperating in the process of learning and using English under the guidance of the teachers, at the same time, they can adjust their emotions and strategies in order to learn actively and promote the comprehensive language using ability. Task-based language teaching is a very influential theory of language learning put forward in the1980s, which emphasizes learning by doing, and places great emphasis on the learning process. It’s student-centered, and students can acquire the target language by completing the meaningful communicative tasks in it, during which students can experience the language in an authentic and natural situation, improve their communicative competence and the comprehensive language using competence, cultivate their autonomous, cooperative and investigative learning ability, and promote their all-round development.Reading comprehension is an important part in the goals of the language skills for the students, and reading teaching occupies a significant position in English teaching, because it can cultivate students’ reading skills, improve their reading comprehension and promote them to develop good reading habits. But at present, in some rural junior middle schools, most of the English teachers still adopt the traditional method to teach the reading part, which ignores the cultivation of students’ comprehensive ability of using language, and it is also hard to arouse the students’ interest and motivation in English learning, not to mention their initiative in learning.According to this phenomenon, the author in this thesis tries to find out whether the application of task-based language teaching is practical and effective in English reading teaching in rural junior middle schools. The author conducted the experiment from February to July in2013in Shuangqiao Middle School of ziyang. She selected two classes as the subjects, one was the control group, and the other one was the experimental group. The author employed the pre-test, post-test and interview to conduct the experiment, that is, all the participants took a pre-test in order to find out whether there were any significant differences in their reading ability; and then all the subjects took a post-test at the end of the experiment to check whether the application of task-based language teaching has improved their reading ability; at last, the author randomly selected40students in the experimental group to interview in order to know their feedback about using task-based language teaching in their English reading teaching. The results of the experiment demonstrated that the application of task-based language teaching is more effective than the traditional teaching method in English reading teaching:before the experiment, there were no any significant differences in the students’reading ability of these two classes, and their reading level wall basically the same; after adopting task-based language teaching in reading teaching in the experimental group, students’scores were better in the experimental group than these in the control group, they have improved their reading ability and they have got great changes in their English vocabulary, reading skills and reading habits. Most of the students welcomed the application of task-based language teaching in their learning, and they held a positive attitude toward it, as they thought that it could not only arouse their learning interest and motivation to speak English, cultivate their achievements and confidence, improve their reading ability and the problem-solving ability, but also foster their cooperative ability, communicative competence and the comprehensive language using ability, and promote their all-round development.However, there are also some limitations during the experiment, for example, the experiment time is so limited, and the number of subjects is so small. Especially when the students need to implement the tasks assigned by the teachers in pair work or group work, they are apt to discuss with each other and depend on others, which leads to reducing the time to think on their own, what’s more, some students can’t obey the discipline in the class and so on, so it needs further study on how to organize the activities in the task-based language teaching class.After the study of the application of task-based language teaching in English reading teaching in rural junior middle schools, the author in the thesis also presents some pedagogical implications in order to better make use of this teaching method to promote the mutual development for both the teachers and the students.