A Study Of The Application Of Task-Based Language Teaching Approach In The College English Reading Course

As reading is one of the most important means of acquiring knowledge, reading activities and strategies have always been the research focus of numerous studies at home and abroad. The study of Task-based Language Teaching throws some new light on second language teaching research theories. TBLT approach has been considered one of the most promising methods of the communicative approach since 1980s and has recently gained considerable support within second language teaching community. Despite the proliferation of studies on reading in the English language, there are relatively few studies on English reading comprehension of Chinese learners. In China, more and more researchers and teachers have been making efforts to do some research on TBLT approach and reading comprehension.TBLT approach is based on traditional teaching theories and approaches and combined with the modern language teaching methods, and this approach makes the students learn the foreign language by completing a series of interactive tasks of communicative activities. During the learning process designed by the teacher carefully, students can learn, understand language by using it, so that they can improve the language proficiency.This thesis attempted, through an experiment of putting the TBLT approach into reading teaching practice, to study the characteristics of TBLT in teaching reading for the second-year students in the university as well as the relationship between the TBLT approach and the students' reading ability and to prove the feasibility and effectiveness of the application of TBLT in the college English teaching course.The one-term experiment totaling 80 hours was conducted by students from two classes, one being an experimental group, and the other a control one. Based on the relative reading teaching models, the author constructed a concrete classroom TBLT model to utilize in the actual reading course. The TBLT teaching method was practiced in the experimental group while the traditional teacher-centered method was used in the control class. Two reading examinations consisting of passages selected from IELTS (academic reading test) were used as the pretest and the posttest respectively in the research. The scores of the two examinations were used as a measurement of students' reading proficiency of the training program. The questionnaire was used after the training course to probe the changes in students' attitudes and behavior of the experimental classes before and after the training. Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) 10. 0 was applied to analyzing the scores.The results of the analysis prove the correlative relationship between TBLT and reading achievements. The major findings show that TBLT approach facilitates the change of students' attitudes towards classroom interaction, enhances students' awareness of participation and students' frequency of classroom interaction, promotes the process of teaching and learning, improves students' learning autonomy and communicative competence and cultivates students' reading ability.Language teaching is both theoretical and practical work. The purpose of this thesis is to prove the feasibility of applying the interaction into the teaching reading in the classroom by putting the theory into practice. And some recommendations for future research are offered so that TBLT could be further improved and accomplish more in the future college English teaching.