On The Application Of TBLT To The Teaching Of Reading In Senior High School

Reading plays a very important role in English learning in the Chinese seniorhigh school. It is one of the most important basic skills in English learning. At thesame time, reading comprehension is the key and indispensable part of the NationalEnglish Entrance Examination. However, how to carry out effective reading teachingis still a big problem in the Chinese senior high school. To find an effective approachto improve students’ reading ability, many experts have made great efforts to doresearch. Task-based Language Teaching emerges as the time requires. Task-basedLanguage Teaching emphasizes the center of students and promotes learning by doing;students learn by completing a series of tasks, which will greatly stimulate thestudents’ interest to learn English. In order to improve the current teaching of Englishreading in middle school, the Ministry of Education of China issues New EnglishCurriculum Standards for High School in2001to advocate Task-based LanguageTeaching. Based on the theory of task-based language teaching, this study aims toanswer the following questions:1) What is the current reading situation of the students?2) Whether Task-based Language Teaching is an effective approach to stimulatestudents’ interest and improve their reading ability?In order to answer the research questions, an experimental study is carried out.The present study is conducted in Gengma No.1Middle School in Yunnan Provinceand the subjects are all senior one students from two classes: Class160and Class161.Class160is the experimental class in which Task-based Language Teaching approachis applied; Class161is the controlled class and is taught by traditionalGrammar-translation Method. With the purpose of knowing the present readingsituation of the subjects, a questionnaire is designed, and results are collected andreported. Besides, two reading tests are distributed to the subjects before and after theexperiment to see whether the students in the experimental class make greater progress than those in the controlled class.With the help of SPSS (11.5), the results of the research are analyzed and thefindings are summarized as the following:1) TBLT helps to arouse students’ interest and enhance their motivation bydesigning a serious of tasks in English reading learning. After the application of TBLTinto English reading class, some students behave more actively in class. They becomethe center of the learning for each of them has access to participating in the readingtasks.2) Students in the experimental class become more sensitive to reading strategiesand can use them in reading process more easily. After training by TBLT during thisterm, their ability to use reading strategies has been developed.3) Students’ communicative and cooperative ability in the experimental class hasbeen developed. In the TBLT class, the students are encouraged to communicate andcooperate with each other when they are doing tasks. In this way, their ability tocommunicate and cooperate has been enhanced.Form the above findings, the thesis puts forward some implications for Englishreading teaching and learning:1) Task is the most significant component in TBLTEnglish reading class;2) The students should be the center of the class. They shouldbe given more opportunities to communicate and cooperate with each other to finishdifferent tasks;3) It is necessary for the teachers of English to make enoughpreparations before class. In return, the students can benefit. Although measures havebeen taken to guarantee the validity of this study, yet there are some limitations.Therefore, improvements to this research can be made and further studies should becarried out in the future.