The Application Of Task-based Language Teaching To IELTs Reading

With the development of economy and globalization, more and more people are willing to study abroad or immigrate in order to have better opportunities to develop themselves. For the sake of this dream, they have to take part in the foreign language test and attain the required scores. International English Level Test System, abbreviated as IELTS, is one of the most popular English tests accepted by professional bodies, immigration authorities and other government agencies in the world. Reading is one section of the test, and also a primary language input instrument for English learners to achieve sufficient material. Therefore, strong literary abilities are required and essential for IELTS candidates.However, due to the various problems in the traditional and current IELTS reading teaching, Chinese candidates'abilities of reading comprehension are generally far from satisfaction. Fortunately, in recent years, a great deal of study or research in L2 has been conducted on teaching methodology and reading comprehension. Task-based language teaching, which is a linguistic pedagogy which stress'learning by doing'and exposed the students to some specific linguistic tasks in order to meet the aims of cultivating some linguistic competence, is one of popular research and approved by many researchers.The paper made an experimental study on the application of task-based approach to the IELTS reading. Although many studies have claimed the positive effect of TBLT on enhancing reading proficiency, there have been relatively few studies to investigate the suitable teaching methodology to IELTS reading training usually with a short session so that the writer proposed Item-based Model to check its effect on students'reading abilities in an ongoing IELTS reading training. An experiment which lasted for two months was set up in the paper and tries to find out the following specific questions: Is TBLT an efficient teaching methodology to improve IELTS students'interest in English reading? Is TBLT and effective teaching method to enhance IELTS students'performance in IELTS? Does Item-based model boost IELTS students'reading proficiency?The subjects of the experiment consisted of 29 Chinese candidates for IELTS, who just graduated from senior high schools and their English levels are averagely intermediate. Prior to the experiment, they are divided into two separate classes according to the assessment when they enrolled in the training, known as the Experimental Class and the Controlled Class where each had 14 and 15 students respectively. A pre-test and pre-questionnaire were also conducted before the experiment was unfolded. The pre-test was extracted from one reading test 2 of Cambridge IELTS 5 published by Cambridge University and Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. And the questionnaire involved 20 multiple-choice questions. In the following two-month session of the experiment, the EC and CC adopted Task-based Language Teaching and traditional language teaching respectively. Finishing the reading training, students participated in the IELTS held in 8th May. A post-questionnaires as well as interview were administered. Based on the data analysis and comparisons of pre-questionnaire, post-questionnaire and pre-test, post-test between EC and CC, the research questions was solved by evidence. The results clearly show that the Task-based Language Teaching is effective in improving IELTS students'interest in English reading and performance in IELTS and the Item-based Model do enhance IELTS students'reading proficiency.