Application Of The Task-driven Reading Teaching Of English In Senior Middle Schools

As we enter a new century, educated citizens will require even stronger literacy abilities in increasingly larger numbers of societal settings. Likewise, the growth of science and technology is likely to make greater demands on people's reading abilities."Second language (L2) reading ability, particularly with English as the L2, is already in great demand as English continues to spread, not only as a global language but also as the language of science, technology and advanced research."(C.N.Candlin & D.R.Hall, 2002:2). In the social setting where English acts as a foreign language, enhancing reading abilities mainly depends on classroom teaching; the final aim of classroom instruction is to enable learners to use the foreign language in work or life when necessary. Thus we should teach that part of the language which will be used, and we should teach language in the way that is used in real world. However, as a result of historic habits of long period and the influence from the education in response to tests, classroom teaching, especially the teaching of reading is not always the case. Very often there is a big gap between the use of language in real life and the traditional foreign language pedagogy. Real world communication is an integrated process which involves the active interaction of communicators with language environment. Traditional teaching syllabus has produced a set of discrete and ordered language items and regarded teaching process as the process of learning this set of discrete language items. The ability of reading doesn't get much improvement. Discrete language items can't make the language learning an integrated process. At the end of the 1970's and at the beginning of the 1980's, TDA came out in L2 instruction in North America and European countries; at the end of the 1990's, the approach was spread into our country. TDRT which uses task as teaching means can create a supporting condition favorable to catalyze learners natural and meaningful language use. In task performance, directed by task goals, learners try to make use of all resources and adopt various means to get information, which make the learners in the state of active and natural learning. The New National Criterion for English Course (Department of Education, 2003) clearly advocates to use this teaching approach, and teaching materials based on this criterion also includes study tasks. However, advocating is one thing, implementing is another thing. In the reading practice, because there exist some confused ideas about the model of the teaching of reading using TDRT, many teachers know little about this approach and lack experience on how to use new teaching materials; traditional PPP methods are still pop. The author puts forward own application plan about using TDRT in the teaching of reading in the light of the present situation of English reading teaching, attempting to carry out the exposition of substantial evidence about TDRT in reading from theory and practice.There are five chapters in this thesis. Chapter one is the literature review about the teaching of reading. This part reviews the research status quo of English reading teaching in senior middle schools at present. English reading teaching has been a subject of great topical interest so far. Many people are interested in it, and have dong many researches. But the author thinks that their practices still can't efficiently cultivate the students'ability of reading or arouse their interest or enthusiasm in English reading. Besides, the author also reviews the research status quo about application of TDRT in English reading of senior middle schools. These studies have quite strong one-sidedness, and some don't touch the essence of TDRT. These studies don't take the students'different English levels into consideration and TASK's level is overlooked. So many practices don't achieve the goal of teaching students according to their aptitude and raising themselves together.Chapter two explains the theoretical bases of TDRT in detail. Firstly, the author introduces the psychological process of reading. Then the author introduces definitions of task, the components of task, the activity forms and types of task, etc. The author also introduces the roles of the students and the teacher in TDRT. This makes preparations for the next operation on TDRT in reading.Chapter three involves experimental implementation about TDRT in reading class. The author explains the objective of this experiment, i.e. the effectiveness of application about TDRT in reading, and introduces the subjects and the instruments of this experiment. In this part, the author introduces task design and implementation in terms of goals identification, input selection, classroom activity types and teaching principles from the angle of practice. The author gives detailed description about the procedure of this experiment. The whole process includes three parts: pre-test, mid-test and post-test. Depending on the principle to cultivate students'skills and strategies of reading and enhance their enthusiasm and interest in learning English in combination with the understanding about TDA and relevant reading theories, the author has put forward a concrete teaching model about the teaching of reading using TDRT. Through the application about the model, the basic principles and requirements on TDA have been shown. The author introduces the primary way to collect data, and the procedure of data collection in detail.The fourth part of the thesis focuses on the data analysis. The author collected the data of the three tests in the course of the experiment, made investigations with questionnaires and had an informal discussion. After that, the author carried on detailed analysis for the data by using SPSS system. Through experimenting, contrasting and questionnaires, it has been proved to be effective that TDA is used in the teaching of reading. This approach can activate the students'enthusiasm and interest about reading and make them form the habits of independent study and cooperative study.The fifth part is about the discussions and implications on TDRT. In the course of the experiment, the author experienced that TDA brought some advantages to reading class. Meanwhile, the author also found some issues worth attending about TDRT and issues existing in TDRT. In view of the students'psychological and affective problems in the process of the reading using TDRT, the author has also put forward countermeasures. Owing to the author's limited level, the problems about the application of TDRT in English reading of senior middle schools remain to be further proved and discussed.