Application Of Task-Based Language Teaching Strategy In The Senior Middle School English Reading Classroom

Reading is a basic and widely adopted approach to getting information and obtaining knowledge for people. The cultivation of English reading competence has not only become a major part of language skill teaching objectives but reading, as a main means of language input, can also advance the development of the language output ability. The teaching syllabus for secondary and elementary English advocates emphasizing on developing the reading ability based on the complete practice of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Therefore, an enormous amount of time, money and effort is spent teaching reading in elementary and secondary schools. However, no remarkable success has been achieved. The students still can't read English books or newspapers effectively and after learning English for some years, their reading competence hasn't reached the level required by the teaching syllabus.The present study attempts to investigate the application of Task-Based Language Teaching in the Senior English reading classroom with a view to improving students' reading performance. Task-Based Language Teaching, advocated by the New National English Curriculum Standard (2001), focuses on cultivating the students' ability to use language, to search for necessary information and to cooperate with classmates. It is always organized around a. variety of different kinds of tasks which arc related to the real life and composed of chains of activities psychologically selected, graded and sequenced.Full understanding of Task-Based Language Teaching is the prerequisite for its application. So the paper first probes into the relevant theory, including the theory bases, tasks and principles of Task-Based Language Teaching and Willis' teaching model is presented in detail. Then this thesis explores the application of Task-Based Language Teaching, with designing appropriate and efficient reading tasks as the core. Based on the models of reading process and the principles of task design, the thesis offers designing examples in the reading classroom. To bear testimony to the hypothesis that Task-Based Language Teaching is more effective than the traditional...