Task-based Instruction In The Teaching Of Reading In Senior Middle Schools

Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) has emerged as a significant component in the development of the language curriculum for the past few decades. The total goal of primary English education posed in Standards of English Curriculum is to foster students'ability to apply English, and to enhance their proficiency in English through study and practice. To achieve this goal, task-based instruction is clearly advocated. Task-based instruction advocated in Standards of English Curriculum is an effective teaching means, motivated by application, aiming at application and centered on application.Nunan thinks that a task is an activity, which has a centered purpose and drives the learner to use objective language to participate in the interaction between reading, comprehension, process and output. Richards believes that a task is a specific goal, which can only be achieved by activity of using language. Synthesizing many linguistic educationalists'viewpoint, P. Shehan defines task as such an activity: For which purpose is the soul; During which, a learner does not merely repeat; With which a similar activity in the real world is connected in one-way or another; To which a priority is given. To evaluate whether or not a task is accomplished is to see whether or not it bears a fruit.The writer wanted to try task-based instruction to do teaching research. During the research, reading teaching was chosen to do the experiment. English is a foreign language in our country. Out of classrooms or other particular study environments, the absolute majority of students have little opportunities to practice English, let alone to communicate with native speakers. Reading is the main source for the students to acquire language information. As a complicated course of information processing, reading conveys information from author to reader. Reading teaching plays an important role in the English teaching. It can not only provide the reading materials, but also has the function of cultivating the learners'reading skills and reading habits. The core business of Senior High School English Education is to foster students'ability to read and comprehend. It is also the key to quality education in foreign language study.My thesis dated from the moment when Task-based instruction came about, and based on its theories, it combined with senior school classroom teaching courses and also some data survey to state the meanings, functions, teaching methods and some principles systematically in a variety of forms. The writer set out to study how to cultivate and improve the students'reading ability from the following three aspects: pre-reading (aiming at arising the students'interests to read), while-reading (aiming at developing the students'ability to comprehend the target language), post-reading (aiming at developing the students'ability to output the language and to use the target language to deal with the problems in real-life situation).The students of Class 17, Grade One of N0. 1 Middle School, Linhe participated in this study. During the school term (from September, 2007 to December, 2007) the subjects were required to engage in task-based activities and to use the assigned textbooks and some reading materials which were neither too difficult nor too easy for them to read. The students were divided into groups to take part in in-class discussions. Four or five students formed a group. The writer obtained the data by test; interview; investigation; and classroom behavior observations; and then analyzed the data and made some reflections on it.The results of the experiment proved that proper task design in the reading teaching contributed to developing the learners'reading interests, improving their reading skills and cultivating their reading habits. Their reading skills were enhanced after the experiment.