A Study Of The Application Of Task-based Teaching Method In English Writing Teaching In Senior High School

Writing can test the accuracy and coherence of students' language application and reflect students' ability to use English comprehensively.English Curriculum Standards for General High School(2017)(hereinafter referred to as New Curriculum Standards)have put forward higher requirements for English writing.However,writing has always been a weak part in students' English learning.Many teachers and students in our country are accustomed to traditional 3P teaching mode,namely,Presentation,Practice and Production.This kind of writing teaching is content-centric,result-oriented and teacher-controlled,and lacks active participation of learners' cognition and meaningful use of language,so it is difficult to effectively cultivate learners' active writing attitude and writing habits in this kind of input-based writing teaching,which also affects the improvement of writing ability.Task-based teaching method which used to be strongly advocated in China and is still adopted by many teachers in English reading teaching puts equal emphasis on language input and output.It takes real tasks as the path and learners as the center,enabling students to experience,construct and apply knowledge,and to develop language skills and communicative ability in the process of completing tasks.All of this can contribute to the achievement of new curriculum goals.Therefore,this study is focused on the application of task-based teaching method in English writing in senior high school.The research questions are as follow:(1)How does task-based teaching method affect students' writing attitude and writing habits?(2)What effects does task-based teaching method have on students' English writing scores?(3)What are the changes in the language,content and structure of students' compositions after the experiment?In order to answer the questions above,a comparative experiment which takes the zone of proximal development theory(Hereinafter referred to as ZPD theory)and “input”,“output”,“interaction” hypotheses as theoretical foundation is carried out for nearly one semester in two parallel classes in a senior high school in Nanyang,Henan Province.In this experiment,Class 4,Grade 1 with a total of 48 students is randomly selected as experimental class(Hereinafter referred to as EC)and adopts task-based teaching method;Class 2 Grade 1 with a total of 48 students is chosen as control class(this class is shorted as CC in the following)and uses traditional teaching method.Before the experiment,pre-test is conducted to obtain students' writing scores,and pre-questionnaire is used to understand students' writing attitude and writing habits.Besides,20 English teachers are interviewed by the author to get an overview of the current status of writing teaching and the use of task-based teaching method.After the experiment,students' writing scores is acquired through post-test,and students' performance in writing attitude and writing habits are learned through questionnaires.And then,textual analysis is employed to analyze the changes in the language,content and structure of students' compositions,and interviews are applied to understand students' perspectives on task-based teaching method.Subsequently,a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis method is used to organize and analyze related data and information.Based on the experiment and analysis,this study draws the following conclusions:(1)Task-based writing teaching can cultivate students' positive writing attitude and good writing habits.(2)Task-based writing teaching can improve students' writing scores more significantly.(3)After the experiment,students' writing in EC has changed positively in three aspects: language,content and structure,especially the language and content.Although there are useful findings in this research,there are also limitations.First of all,the research objects and research time are both limited,which affects the reliability of this research to a certain extent.Secondly,task-based teaching method has its own limitations,and it should be better used to avoid its weaknesses.Finally,due to the limited research ability and teaching ability of the author,there are still many deficiencies in the operation of this experiment and analysis of the experimental results.In future study,on one hand,it is necessary for teachers to deepen their understanding of task-based teaching method and apply it more flexibly to writing teaching.On the other hand,they need more time and more research objects to enhance the reliability of their research.