A Study On The Application Of Task-Based Language Teaching In English Reading Teaching Of Senior High School

The importance of English reading teaching has been recognized from the English curriculum design and the content of English textbook in senior high school for a long time. Reading comprehension occupies a larger proportion in English College Entrance Examination, but a lot of students always don’t do well in this part. Therefore, many English teachers put their teaching focus on English reading teaching. However, the current situation of English reading teaching is not optimistic. English teachers stick to different ways of teaching English reading, while many of them find out that their teaching are less effective, because students’ reading ability are not as good as they are expected. Their reading problems are mainly involved in reading at a lower speed or without proper reading skills so that they can’t make rapid progress and have a certain incomprehension in English reading.In the 1980 s, N.S. Prabhu firstly put forward Task-Based Language Teaching(TBLT), and then scholars such as Krashen and Nunan had made further studies on TBLT. In 2001, the English Curriculum Standard by Chinese Education Department advocated that teachers should apply task-based teaching methods in the process of teaching instead of teaching students language in a mechanical way, which has promoted the extensive application of TBLT in China. TBLT is developed based on Communicative Method and emphasizes on the teaching idea- Let students “Learn by doing”. Therefore, TBTL usually makes the classroom teaching become very lively, which will lead to the improvement of current situation of English reading teaching such as low teaching efficiency, poor learning motivations of students, and so on.This study firstly conducts questionnaires completed by teachers and students in Tongren No.1 Middle School of Guizhou province in order to find out the main problems of English reading teaching of senior high school. Secondly, the author selects reading passages from the English textbook of grade 1 in senior high school and designs tasks and plans applied in English reading teaching.Before the experiment, the author lets students from two classes have the pre-test. It turns out that the scores of one class is higher than of the other class. Thus, the author takes the class with higher scores as the experimental class while the other class is as the controlled class.TBLT is applied only in the experimental class, not in the controlled class. After the experiment, the author lets students from these two classes have the post-test and collects all the experimental data. And then, the author analyzes the questionnaires and the results of the pre-test and post-test respectively. According to the contrastive analysis of the results, the scores of the controlled class have increased more than of the controlled class.This study proves that English reading teaching of senior high school has greatly improved through the application of TBLT. The teaching model, the atmosphere of class, the interests and reading ability of students are changed into a better condition. It’s really hoped that English teachers have a further understanding of TBLT and work effectively in English reading teaching of senior high school.