How To Design Tasks In The Task-based High School English Teaching

Language is the most important communicative tool of mankind, and English is an important tool for today's international communication. Therefore, cultivating in our students the ability to use English in communication is a major goal of English teaching in secondary schools. This means that all our teaching should follow the communicative principle, and the process of learning should be a process of using English for communication.Fully reflecting the communicative aspect of teaching and learning is the task-based approach, which has gained popularity since it was first put forward in the 1980s. It is learner-centered and aims to develop the student's various kinds of skills in using the language. Under this approach, teaching is turned into a process of fulfilling tasks by using the target language.A major problem in carrying out this approach is how to devise appropriate tasks. The present paper will therefore focus on the following issues which have become thorny in the process of implementing the task-based methodology, and as far as this paper is concerned, the methodology in senior high schools: (1) factors affecting the difficulty level of tasks, (2) principles concerning the design of tasks, and (3) common varieties of tasks available to senior high school language teachers.