The Application Of Task-based Aapproach To English Writing Teaching In Vocational Colleges

Writing, as an important part of language output, plays an irreplaceable role in verbal communication. Nowadays, communications between countries are becoming more and more frequent and written English, as a carrier of information delivery and acceptance, becomes more and more important; and higher and higher demands have been placed on talents'English writing skills. However, it is investigated that the English writing teaching situation is not satisfactory in vocational colleges whose education aim is to cultivate practical talents wanted in every technical field of our society. There are many issues to be resolved in English writing teaching, such as the time-consuming and inefficient teaching, and the lack of scientific teaching methods. In order to improve the status of English writing teaching and to meet the needs of the society, the author believes that a new teaching approach, which is effective in English writing teaching, is worth of inquiring into.The task-based approach, which is based upon a great deal of researches done by many foreign language teaching researchers, has been one of the most effective language teaching methods since the 1980s. This kind of approach is learner-centered and emphasizes"learning by doing", so it is has been extensively adopted in foreign language teaching so far. It helps the teacher to develop students'comprehensive language competence instead of attaching too much importance to language teaching. In China, many current books and articles have been written on the application of task-based approach in the reading and speaking teaching, while few have been done on the systematic study of the application of task-based approach to writing teaching. What this thesis focuses on is to explore whether the task-based approach is more effective in its application to writing teaching than the traditional approaches through empirical research.The thesis begins with the introduction of the background, purpose and significance of the research, expounds relevant theories of Task-based approach and then reviews the framework of task-based approach and previous researches on this approach and writing teaching. In empirical research, the author designed an experiment in Rizhao Polytechnic. The participants in the experiment are 80 students of non-English majors, with 40 students in the experimental class majored in International Business taught by task-based approach and 40 students in the controlled class majored in Accounting Computerization taught by traditional teaching approaches. The two classes were chosen because they were proved to have no significant difference in their academic achievements, learning motivation, learning interest and learning habit. The instruments utilized in this study are composed of four parts in general, including two writing tests, an experiment, one questionnaire (used both in pre-test and post-test) and an interview. After one term's classroom experiment, data from tests, questionnaires and interview are collected. According to the analysis of the statistics processed by SPSS(17.0) from the result of the experiment, the results show: (1) The task-based approach is more effective in promoting students'writing competence than the traditional writing approach; (2) The task-based approach is more effective in improving the interest, confidence and motivation of students in writing learning than the traditional PPP approach. In the end, the thesis presents the major findings, pedagogical implications for English teaching and points out the limitations of the present study and suggestions for the future research.