A Study Of The Effect Of The Task-based Teaching Method On Junior High School Students’ English Reading Comprehension Ability

Compulsory Education English Curriculum Standard（2022）stipulates that quality-oriented education stresses learning process and aims to take practice,exploration and cooperation into consideration through the fulfillment of tasks.However,traditional English reading teaching focuses more on vocabulary and structure,neglecting students’needs for communication in daily life.As a result,what students have gained through classroom learning is no more than mere book knowledge,and their literal,inferential and critical comprehension abilities have not been taken good care of.It is necessary to carry out the task-based teaching method in English reading teaching.Therefore,the thesis conducts the task-based teaching method in junior high school to prove the effectiveness in improving students’ comprehension ability.Based on the social constructivism,input and interactive hypothesis,the thesis seeks to address the following questions:1)What effect does the application of the task-based teaching method have on junior high school students’ literal comprehension?2)What effect does the application of the task-based teaching method have on junior high school students’inferential comprehension?3)What effect does the application of the task-based teaching method have on junior high school students’ critical comprehension?Three research methods are employed in this research:experiment,questionnaire and interview.The experiment lasts four months and the participants are 74 Grade Nine students in two parallel classes in junior high school in Jining,Shandong Province.Firstly,the questionnaire is divided into three parts:students’ attitudes of English reading,tasks,and students’ English reading comprehension ability.It is to collect information about the English learning condition of the two classes in detail.At the same time,pre-test from the monthly test by San Weizhai in Jining is undertaken.Then,the traditional teaching method is applied in the control class,but the task-based teaching method is applied in the experimental class.After the experiment,post-test is conducted to test students,comprehension ability and interview is carried out among several students in the experimental class to get the feedback of the task-based teaching method in reading teaching.Detailed analysis of the research yields the results as below.Firstly,the literal comprehension ability has been greatly improved in the experimental class after one-term experiment.However,there is no obvious improvement in the control class.Secondly,the task-based teaching method has positive effect on students’ reading comprehension abilities,especially the inferential comprehension ability.In the reading process,students think actively to have better understanding of knowledge,which promotes the development of the inferential comprehension ability.Thirdly,after the experiment,participants in the experimental class have improved the critical comprehension greatly.They intend to take an active part in activities in class and they are more confident in expressing views critically.Therefore,the task-based teaching method is an effective way to improve reading comprehension ability.In view of these findings,the thesis draws some pedagogical implications for teachers and students.For teachers,they should enrich themselves and learn more professional knowledge as well as understand students’ level and individual differences deeply.For students,they need to have a better understanding of background information.They should be active in class and connect what they have learned in class with their daily lives.Finally,there are some limitations and shortcomings,for example,the number of the participants is not large enough,the experimental duration is not long and the research level is not various.So in future junior high school teaching,the participants and the experimental duration need to be extended as well as the research level need to be various.