An Experimental Study Of Task-based Approach In Junior High School English Reading Teaching

Task-based Approach has always been one of the most important research subjects for both domestic and foreign experts.It is a “goal-oriented,learner-centered” classroom activity.The core of the Task-based Approach is to train students to communicate in target language and to accomplish tasks in the form of cooperation.From the results of many scholars' research on Task-based Teaching can prove that Task-based Approach not only helps learners improve language study ability,but also promotes learners' study motivation.Reading is not only an important skill in the process of language acquisition,but also an important teaching content in language teaching activities.It's one of the most important goals for middle school English teachers to improve students' English reading ability.However,the traditional teaching method on teacher-centered influences the students' reading effectiveness in the middle school English teaching.The Ministry of Education announces the new curriculum standards requirements,which points out that English curriculum's basic education goal is to develop students' language skills,language knowledge,emotional attitude,learning strategies and cultural awareness.Therefore,the contemporary English teachers should change their traditional teaching methods to meet with the requirements of the new curriculum standards.The focus of this paper is to prove that Task-based Approach is effective in English reading teaching in junior high school,which can enhance students' reading ability and cultivate student's English learning interest,so that students can change their study habit from passive learning into autonomy,cooperation and inquiry learning.The task-based reading teaching program can be divided into three steps: pre-reading,reading,after reading.In the pre-reading,the teacher introduces and assigns the topic discussion related to students.Let students prepare for the tasks,and teachers should consider the difficulty of task according to students' self-learning situation,so as to arouse students' interest.In the course of tasks,students should plan,report and carry out the tasks.After the task,teachers continue to design reasonable tasks and evaluate the performance of the groups to arouse students' learning interest and improve their comprehensive ability.In this paper,the author selected two classes(Class 9 and Class 10)in Grade Eight in No.2 Middle School in Cangzhou city,Hebei province as the research subjects.Class 9 was the experimental class and class 10 was the control one.The Task-based Language Teaching method was adopted in the experimental class and the traditional teaching method was adopted in the control class.The experiment lasted for one semester and the students are surveyed before the experiment in the experimental class and the control one.Compared with the control class,the experimental results show that with the Task-based Approach,the experimental class students' reading interest and reading ability had significantly enhanced.The results also show that the students are more interested in learning English and the learning style is more inclined to the way of autonomous,cooperative and inquiry in the experimental class.After a semester of the experiment,compared with control class,the author found that the experimental class students' reading ability has been enhanced and their performance has become significantly better,which proves that Task-based Reading Teaching can help students improve their reading ability.