The Application Of Willis Task-based Language Teaching Model In The Reading Class Of Vocational High School

Reading is an important way for people to acquire information. It has always been the focus of language teaching. The improvement of reading ability is conducive to the integrated training of listening, speaking, reading and writing. However, the current situation of English reading teaching in vocational high school is not optimistic. Traditional teaching approaches result in failing to cultivate students'reading ability. This thesis is based on Willis task-based language teaching(TBLT) theory. It is an attempt to study task-based teaching of English reading in vocational high school. The ultimate purpose of the thesis is to study an effective way of cultivating students'interest in reading and improving their English reading comprehensive ability.In the traditional English reading class, the teacher is the center and the purpose of teaching is to explain knowledge to students. The teaching procedures mainly involve reading, explaining, practicing and asking questions. At the same time, the teaching contents are irrelevant to students'real life, and lack authenticity. Thus, students lose interest in learning and lack learning motivation. As a result, students'reading ability is unsatisfactory. Since the task-based teaching model can overcome the flaw of the traditional reading teaching model , take the student as the center of learning and help students gain knowledge through doing . The author takes two parallel classes of a vocational school as one experimental class and one comparison class, and then carries on teaching experiment for a semester (16 weeks). In the experimental class, Willis TBLT theory is adopted in English reading teaching; In the comparison class, the traditional 3P teaching model is used. The author uses the statistics software STATA as the data analysis tool to analyze the English learning result and the reading comprehension result. After the experiment, we find out students' reading emotion manners, strategies as well as the receptivity to Willis TBLT theory by the questionnaire and the interview. The experimental result has showed that Willis task-based language teaching theory is more effective than the traditional 3P teaching mode, in improving reading ability.The thesis includes five chapters. The first chapter mainly introduces the research background, the necessity and the significance of this research. Chapter Two reviews the definition of"task" and "reading", task-based teaching model, Willis task-based teaching pattern and many related considerations. In Chapter Three, the methodology of the research is introduced in detail, which includes research questions, participants, instruments and the research process. The last chapter reports results and discussion. It proves the effectiveness TBLT in English reading through detailed data analysis of the experiment. Finally, the conclusion chapter summarizes main research findings and points out its pedagogical implications as well as limitations of the study.