Application Of Task-based Language Teaching To English Reading Teaching In Rural Senior High School

TBLT(Task-based Language Teaching) is an influential language teaching approach put forward by language teaching researchers in the 1980 s after tons of research and study. Task-based Language Teaching(TBLT) became very popular in foreign language teaching when it was introduced to China. It aims at the authentic language teaching, and facilities students to learn and use language in the process of accomplishing communicative tasks. TBLT emphasizes “learning by doing”, in which students naturally learn language by engaging in activities and finishing language teaching tasks together with teachers to promote foreign language acquisition.The thesis is a contrastive experimental research between the TBLT model and the traditional teaching model applications on English reading in rural senior high school, the purpose of which is to explore the effectiveness of TBLT in English reading teaching for rural senior high school. The research questions of the thesis are as follows:(1) Can the application of Task-based Language Teaching improve rural senior high students’ reading achievements?(2) Does adopting the Task-based Language Teaching in English reading class facilitate students’ interest in English reading? In order to explore these two questions, the author carried out a two-month teaching experiment in the two classes in Senior One from No.1 Middle School in Tongwei Town,GanSu province. One is the experiment class, and the other one is the control class. The TBLT was adopted in the experiment class, while the traditional teaching method was adopted in the control class. Before and after the experiment, the author did the tests, and conducted questionnaires to students in the two classes. The author analyzed and studied the experimental results by using SPSS, finding out that the experimental students’ reading ability was significantly improved, and their English reading interest became stronger. It proved that TBLT is feasible and efficient in English reading teaching for rural senior high school.The research contains six chapters. Chapter one is introduction, mainly elaborates on research background,the present situation of English reading in rural senior high school, research purpose and significance. Chapter two is literature review, stating the definition and classification of the task, the principles of task designing and related studies at home and abroad. Chapter three is theoretical framework, mainly mentioning “learning by doing” theory, interaction hypothesis theory and constructivism. Chapter four is the research design. The experiment mainly consists of two parts. First, pre-test and post-test were given to students of the two classes.Second, a questionnaire survey was conducted to further learn about the effect of TBLT on students’ Englishreading interest before and after the experiment. Chapter five is results and discussion. The statistic SPSS was used to do T-test on students’ scores. The average mark, excellence rate and pass rate of the two classes were also compared. The results revealed that students’ reading achievement in the experiment class was significantly improved. The results of the questionnaires indicated that the experimental class students’ interest in English reading was also evidently enhanced. Chapter six comes up with conclusion about the implications and limitation of this research, and also gives some suggestions for future research on this respect.