A Research On Task-based Reading Teaching In Junior High Schools

Reading is one of the important ways for people to obtain knowledge, to get information, to communicate and to take pleasure. Promoting the students' reading ability is greatly emphasized in New English Curriculum Standard. As we know, once one possesses the ability of reading by himself, he has the ability to learn by himself, then he has a firm foundation for his further study. Hence, reading has drawn the academic concerns of TEFL/ TESL both at home and abroad for a long time and great attention has been paid to the study on the models of how to teach reading. However, the writer finds that reading is still the weak link of students in English learning on the basis of many years' experience of teaching, and many English teachers in junior high schools are still employing the traditional way of teaching in reading classes. The traditional reading classes are often boring, so the problem that how we should arouse students' internal demand, create an excellent teaching situation to develop the language and thinking ability along with the character of main body effectively with the reading ability developed at the same time has been discussed.Fortunately, the New English Curriculum Standard has been carried out through China and it advocates task-based language teaching. The New English Curriculum Standard explicitly points out that task-based language teaching can develop students' comprehensive ability of language use in the course of English teaching, which emphasizes that the students perform tasks in English, which involves experience, practice, participation, communication and cooperation. Task-based language teaching has become a heated topic in L2 acquisition and EFL teaching. It is an important language-teaching mode that is based on lots of research and practiced by foreign language teaching researchers. It emphasizes the ability to communicate through interaction in the target language, the introduction of authentic texts into the learning situation. It also emphasizes that the provision of opportunities for learners focuses not only on language, but also on the learning process itself. It enhances learner's personal experiences as important contributing elements to classroom learning and attempts to link classroom language learning with language activation outside the classroom. This thesis attempts to study the implementation of task-based language teaching in reading classes and discusses the new model of task-based reading classes in junior high schools so as to confirm its feasibility in teaching reading.The analysis of domestic and overseas reference documents, and an analysis of what is drawn from the experiment are two methods adopted in the study. According to the theories of task-based language teaching and the framework of Jane Willis, the writer designs the teaching procedures of reading. They are pre-reading, while reading and post-reading. By experiment, the writer tries to clarify the advantages and disadvantages of the practical application of task-based language teaching.The research result shows that it has a positive meaning to apply task-based language teaching theory into teaching reading practice. It is beneficial to students and is workable and is an efficient way to teaching reading.