Exploring The Application Of Task-based Teaching To The English Writing In Senior High School In Northern Shanxi District

As one of the four basic skills in English, writing plays an important role in Englishlearning, and with the increase of writing proportion in College Entrance Examination inChina, its importance stands out in English teaching. Therefore, more and more teacherstend to focus on English writing. With the new curriculum reform carried out, task-basedteaching approach has been playing an increasingly important role in guiding classroomteaching in senior high school. Because English teaching in northern Shanxi district isrelatively backward, the present author thinks that the task-based teaching approach can beadopted to improve the outcome of English writing as an active and creative measure.Based on the theories of task-based teaching by Willis, Krashen and Nunan, this studyattempts to apply task-based teaching to the English writing in senior high school innorthern Shanxi district. Two of the so called “Wuxi classes” from Yanan No.1Senior HighSchool (for the major subjects in the two classes are taught by Wuxi teachers) are involvedin the experiment, one as the control class, while the other the experimental class. Thestudents in the experimental class are taught by the task-based teaching approach in writingwhile the students in the control class taught with the traditional teaching method. Thisstudy mainly explores the following two questions:(1) Can the application of task-based teaching approach motivate students’ interest inwriting? If so, in which aspects?(2) Can the application of task-based teaching approachimprove students’English writing level effectively? If so, in which aspects?Questionnaires, pre-tests and post-tests as well as interviews are used to collect data inthe study. Through the period of a five-month experimental study with the task-basedteaching approach, and by analysis and comparison, the following conclusions are drawn:(1) The application of task-based teaching approach in writing in senior high school innorthern Shanxi district can motivate students’ interest much better than the traditionalwriting teaching method. The study mainly shows that the students can not only actively participate in class activities, discuss questions with the classmates, but also write somediaries and essay reports after class. All this, in turn, gives them a sense of achievement inwriting.(2) The application of task-based teaching approach can definitely improve theirwriting level. The study mainly shows that the students can not only use words, phrases,sentence patterns and grammar in a flexible way, but also have some ideas about thecontent in order to revise with the peer evaluation.