The Effects Of Pre-task Activities Of The Task-based Instruction On The College English Writing

Influenced by different concepts of language learning and teaching, different writing approaches have emerged, two of which are the product approach and process approach, which are the most influential approaches and have had great influence on ESL/EFL writing instruction since the early 20^th century, and which are the most prevalent ones in China today. However, some disadvantages of them have also been found. Thus, the task-based learning has been advocated in the recent years in China. The task-based approach in writing focusing on both meaning and forms, is supposed to be an integrative approach combining the principles of both the product and the process approaches, and it also arouses many experts' attention. Now lots of teachers wrote essays about it, but few of them conducted experimental researches about it, let alone advance its implication in teaching writing in college.This study investigates the effects of different pre-task linguistic preparations on writing output performance of two types of L2 writing tasks (i.e. descriptive writing, argumentative writing) by EFL Chinese university students in terms of fluency, complexity, and accuracy. The subjects are 60 college students from Wenzhou University. 30 of them are in experimental class while the other 30 are in control class. They are required to write an essay within 30 minutes, but they differ in the pre-task activities stage (include teaching, consciousness-raising, activities, planning). Transcripts of writing are evaluated on three measures covering the areas of fluency, complexity, and accuracy. Results from questionnaires and interviews help interpret the findings. This study suggests that pre-task activities enhance the fluency and complexity of the students' output language, but in different areas and to different extents. Therefore, this research verifies the importance and feasibility of task-based language teaching.